Progress + gratitude

Hello everybody. I have just finished rewriting the 9th chapter of Working with Stories. I have 5 chapters left to go. The writing is going well, and I am gaining confidence in my hope that WWS4 will be more helpful to people than WWS3 has been. I'm wrapping up my gift to the world, and I'm grateful that I have the chance to do it.

When I am ready, possibly by the end of 2024, I will be posting a draft copy of WWS4 on workingwithstories.org to gather feedback before I begin to prepare the book for publication. 

A very helpful reader has been sending me such useful feedback on the chapters I have rewritten so far. I want to thank that person with all my heart -- as should you, because they are making the book better for all of us.

I don't think I can handle any additional early readers at the moment, but I will be in great need of your feedback when I post the draft version of WWS4 (and the second draft of WWS-S). So watch this space, and watch workingwithstories.org, for updates.

The writing is going well, but it's also going slowly. That's because I am working on three books at the same time:

1. Working with Stories, Fourth Edition (WWS4)
   
2. Working with Stories Simplified (WWS-S)
   
3. Working with Stories in Depth (WWS-D)
   

For those who are interested, here's what I am doing:

• I am working to trim the length of WWS4 down as much as I can. I have been shrinking my longer explanations and moving several whole sections to WWS-D.
  
• At the same time, I am reformatting WWS4 for easier reading, with one column, more white space, and more tables and lists. This adds pages, but it looks a lot better.
  
• I am also adding a lot of new content to WWS4 based on what I have learned over the last ten years. This is also a source of new pages! But I think it's making the book more useful.
  
• My original goal was to bring the length of WWS4 down from 650 to 500 pages. I'm not sure if I will be able to do that, but I will keep trying to balance brevity with clarity and utility.
  
• While I do this, I am also working to trim WWS-S down from its current draft length of 300 pages to 250 or 200. I am removing many of my longer explanations there (which would fit better in WWS4) and replacing them with shorter versions. I wanted WWS-S to be a quick-reference "cheat sheet" for the longer book, but I ended up putting too much into it, so I'm taking it out again.
  
• Right now I am just dumping sections from WWS into WWS-D. But when I'm finished with WWS4 and WWS-S, I will trim that book down as well. My plan is for it to include the most important "extra" stuff people are likely to want to read about PNI after they have finished reading WWS4 -- and not just everything else I have written about PNI ever. So I will be moving a lot of my older writing into a last-stop archive (not a book, just a PDF) for the few brave souls who want to rummage around in the dregs.
• Finally, when all of this is done, I will finish the Working with Stories Sourcebook, expanding it from 36 to 50 sets of questions and adding 50 case studies.
  

I would love to finish all of this by the spring of 2025, but I can't promise any particular date because ... 

A large project that I have been hoping will happen for years is actually, finally going to happen. I have promised to work on it, part-time, for the next few years. I am very excited to have the opportunity to pour my heart into a new and exciting PNI project. This also means that I can keep doing what I've been doing for the past 25 years. That's amazing, and I am so grateful.

Starting soon, however, I will be fitting my work on book revisions around my work on the new project, so my writing progress will slow down even further. Luckily I'm used to doing that, so it should be fine.

If you want to see my new writing right now, my suggestion is to look at the draft version of Working with Stories Simplified, which is on the workingwithstories.org web site (look on the "More" page). Because I am moving some of what is in that draft to WWS4, you can consider it a sort of preview of my revisions to that book. 

Surgery

Major surgery. Not for me. For Working with Stories.

Lately I have been expanding my book Working with Stories into a four-book series:

1. The fourth edition of the original book (Working with Stories in Your Community or Organization: Participatory Narrative Inquiry)
   
2. Working with Stories Simplified -- a shorter, faster, cheat-sheet version of WWS
3. The Working with Stories Sourcebook -- a reference book of questions and case studies 
4. Working with Stories in Depth -- a catch-all repository of everything else I have written (and think is worth keeping) about the fine details of PNI 

Recently I finished writing Working with Stories Simplified, which I started working on two years ago when I was building my online courses. Next on my list was the updating of WWS into its fourth edition.

I have not touched the third edition of WWS since 2014. I thought I would only need to change a few things here and there. Ha!

Last week I went through the new and old books, comparing what I had written in each. I am happy to report that my embarrassment rule (that when I look back on older work I ought to be embarrassed) is working perfectly. I have learned so much more than I realized over the past ten years of doing PNI and talking to people about it. That's wonderful! But it also means I can't just tweak a few things in WWS. It needs major surgery.

So I have a dilemma. The most common negative comment I have gotten about WWS is that the book is too long. But I have so much more to say than I did ten years ago. I feel like WWS needs to double in length to be useful. That can't happen!

After much thinking, I have come up with a plan.

Simplified came out at 300 pages, which was twice as long as I wanted it to be. That partly happened because some of the new things I wanted to say about PNI slid into my writing for Simplified. So, having (I thought) finished the Simplified book, I am now going to move some of what I wrote in it to the main book, where it more correctly belongs.

I have begun to work section by section through both books, comparing what I wrote in Simplified to what I have in WWS.

• In some cases, what I wrote in Simplified is still just a shorter version of what I have in WWS. I will not need to change those parts of WWS, though I will trim them down as much as I can.
• In some cases, what I wrote in Simplified is not different in meaning from what I have in WWS, but I've come up with better ways to explain it since I wrote WWS. In those cases I'll update WWS to use my new explanations while I shorten the same explanations in Simplified.
  
• In some cases, what I wrote in Simplified describes new ideas, concepts, or techniques that are not in WWS at all. In those cases I will add new sections to WWS. But when I can, I'll use what I wrote for Simplified and write new, shorter explanations there.
  
• In some cases, I left sections out of Simplified that I have in WWS. In those cases I will consider moving the sections from WWS to the catch-all book (because maybe they aren't that necessary in either book).
  

My overall goal will be to update the entire book series to help people understand everything they need to know to do PNI without having to read more than they need to read. I hope to reduce the length of WWS proper to 500 pages and Simplified to 200 pages (and further if possible).

A few other decisions:

• I plan to remove the double-column layout of WWS. I never liked it. I did it because it reduced the page count. I'll work on using fewer words instead.
  
• Because I plan to change WWS so much, I have had to strip the index out of the book. It was a wonderful index! I paid a professional indexer to build it, and she did a great job. But its markers were spread all around the LaTeX writing/code, and I can't easily manipulate the book with it in place. I will write a new index. It will be shorter and simpler, but it will be adequate.
• I might not publish the in-depth catch-all book on Amazon. It takes a lot of time to get books ready to publish, especially the Kindle versions. Only a handful of people have ever told me that they read More Work with Stories (the previous catch-all book). Making that book an online PDF-only e-book could save me a lot of time I can use for other things.

So that's the plan.

If you would like to tell me what parts of WWS you would like to see stay or go or change, drop me a note (cfkurtz at cfkurtz dot com) and tell me about it.

One down, three to go

I have just uploaded my finished book manuscript for Working with Stories Simplified. You can download it on the "More" page at workingwithstories.org. 

Now an update and an explanation.

When I wrote here last, I was looking for a job, having given up on making (enough) money from consulting and online courses. 

I looked for work full-time for about four months. It didn't work (difficult job market, weird resume), so about two months ago I decided to stop wasting my time. It looks like I will have to either reboot my consulting career or find a job unrelated to what I've been doing for the past 25 years. I've already tried the reboot option (that was the online courses), so I think it's time to do the second thing.

I'm fine with that, but I can't do it with all of this knowledge still stuck in my head! So I talked to my husband, and we decided to use some of our retirement savings to finish my four-book revision of Working with Stories. So I'm doing that, and unless I get a job (or a lot of consulting) doing PNI soon, this will be my final contribution to the field. It's time to hand PNI over to a new generation of thinkers and doers, and I'm enthused about getting all four books done at last. 

Next I will work on the fourth edition of Working with Stories, updating it to reflect everything I've learned over the past ten years and trimming out some of the less-used parts. When that's done, I'll finish the Sourcebook and the In Depth book. My plan is to finish all of this by the end of this year. Then I'll be ready to turn the page and see what comes next.

I do not plan to publish any of these books on Amazon (print or Kindle) until I have finished all of their content. But I'll be putting them up on my website in PDF format as soon as they are ready to read. (If necessary I can hire someone to do the technical parts of the publishing process.)

Wish me luck! If you have any comments on the new Simplified book, or if there is anything you think I should change (or add or remove) in any of the WWS books, now is the time to tell me.

New paper, new network name

Hey everybody. I wanted to tell you about a new paper on Participatory Narrative Inquiry that has just come out. Written mostly by my colleague Rachel Colla (though I helped a little), the paper makes a strong case for the use of PNI in Wellbeing Research. I was so impressed by how Rachel pulled together the growing body of research literature connected to PNI. It's worth a read!

Over at the Participatory Narrative Practitioner Network, we have decided to drop the last part of our name. Now we are just the Participatory Narrative Practitioners. We have also switched from Zulip to Discord for our ongoing chats. For the time being we are using Discord for our monthly meetings as well. The best thing about Discord is that the voice-chat line is always open, so we can meet up anytime anyone wants to. To join us, visit pnpnet.org and click the Discord link.

My job search is going pretty well so far. I sure hope people are reading my cover letters, because I am putting a lot of thought into them! If I have not already asked you for advice or to be a reference, and you'd be interested in either thing, please do drop me a line.

The open source PNI Practicum courses are ready to go

Hello everybody. My free and open-source PNI Practicum courses are finally ready for you to use. As of today, any interested group can download the materials, form a cohort, schedule some meetings, and get started.

The courses now require a minimum cohort of at least seven people, at least one of whom is comfortable facilitating group exercises. That person (or persons) will run the sandbox sessions, meetings in which students experience PNI techniques and exercises from a participant's point of view (before facilitating similar sessions themselves). If everyone in your group has had facilitation experience, you can take turns running the sandbox sessions.

I have also created a new "Prelude" course that (at 4 weeks) is much shorter than the I-level (17 weeks) and II-level (21 weeks) courses. This brief course does require students to carry out some outside-of-class activities, so it still - barely - counts as a practicum course. But it saves a lot of time by having the entire course cohort collaborate on one shared project, one with a fixed plan on a fixed topic. If the longer courses are out of the question for you, the prelude may be just what you need.

In transitioning these course materials, I have taken care to leave the door open (just a bit) to the possibility of generating some more return on my two-year investment in building the courses. Anyone can take any of the PNI Practicum courses for free. However, groups who want some guidance and support while they take a PNI Practicum course can contact me to see if I am available for bespoke consulting. If you are interested in this option, send me a note at cfkurtz@cfkurtz.com.

Over the past few months, I have spent some time looking for a full-time job, as I said I was planning to do in my previous blog post. I was recently asked to do some consulting work that will keep me busy for the next few months. As I work on that project, I will continue my job search. So far I have noticed that I am most drawn to work that has something to do with ecology and the environment. The idea of coming full circle and applying my decades of experience with story work to my original passion for ecology is an appealing prospect. I am also interested in work that has to do with empowerment and conflict resolution. If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate hearing from you.