How can creativity fuel a remarkable Solo life? Writer and storytelling expert Carrie Osgood joins Peter McGraw in the Solo Studio to explore using storytelling to embrace unconventional choices, alternative narrative frameworks beyond the Hero’s Journey, and how art can be a tool for personal transformation. Listen now and start rewriting your own story!
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Listen to Episode #236 here
Creative Journeys
I’m joined in the Solo studio by a proud solo and creative expert who helps organizations and individuals communicate with impact. From Hollywood to the United Nations. Her award-winning work spans storytelling, branding, and education. She’s also the author of Path to the Palace and Escapades in Caves. Welcome, Carrie Osgood.
Thank you so much for having me.
Carrie, how’d we get to know each other?
We met through CU Boulder initially because I’m an adjunct there in the Journalism program. When you were first starting a few years ago and I saw you were starting to promote solos, I reached out to you immediately. That’s when we got initially connected and then we met in person at your book launch.
The Solo Salon.
Yes.
Carrie is a proud solo and she is also a patient solo because we have had several misconnections getting this together. I’m thrilled to have you here. We should start by getting to know your solo journey before turning our attention to the topic of this episode, which is creative journeys more generally. Where do we start?
The Solo Journey & Creative Identity
My solo journey is connected to my creative journey in a way because I have always been a creative person since I was two. When my parents talked about me, it was like she couldn’t stop making things, she couldn’t stop singing, and she couldn’t stop being animated with the creative process. That’s been in my DNA since birth. Where it connects with the solo piece is when I was in high school, my first great love was the arts. My passion for bringing stories to life was far greater than any crush I had on a boy. That always set me apart because I had this drive and this love of creative flow that I discovered young and I have had this purpose young, and boys in high school don’t get that.
I’d meet men who were far too old for me at the time who would get it. It was these misconnections as I was starting like, “Where am I going? What am I doing?” When I was in college, there were two big decisions I made that I didn’t think would define me as a solo later on, but they did, and I hold to them to this day. The first one was I’d rather be with myself than be with anyone who brings me down.
I don’t have to be in a bad relationship. I can create on my own. I can explore on my own. If I’m going to be with someone, I want them to elevate me support me, and make my life better. To be with someone was very hollow for me. The other piece that happened in college was I got frustrated trying to do things and meeting other people to do them. I made this decision that I’m not going to let not having people do things with me stop me from doing what I want to do.
Is that creatively or in general?
In general. The act of if I want to go to a concert, I’m going to go to a concert. If I want to go to a movie, I’m going to go to the movie. In my third year in college, I lived in England for a year. That’s when I discovered solo travel. I was scared initially, but then people were like, “If you want to go, just go. This is how you do it. You do the hostels, you do this, and you do that.” It was extraordinary and it completely liberated me with my path in life.
It took me a long time to figure out the best way to solo travel, the best way to feel comfortable eating out on my own, and all those things. It was a long learning curve to figure out what worked and what didn’t, and what happens when I am lonely and I want to talk to people, but there aren’t people to be there, and all those things. It was in my early twenties that I was able to explore that.
How wonderful. A lot of people spend their whole lives and never get to that spot. That’s very exciting and I see a little of my story in that way. My first real plane trip was when I was 22. I flew to Colorado through here from New Jersey to celebrate my getting through college in four years on my own. I did a 9-day solo trip around the state.
In hindsight now, talk about ripping the bandaid off in a sense, that is big. Having that insight that you are not going to let the lack of another person hold you back and then, even before that, being in high school and falling in love with the arts, falling in love with creativity, and falling for this feeling of flow, and recognizing. Let’s be honest, it’s not just boys in high school, but most people don’t quite get it.
A specific thing, I don’t know if you are familiar with the musical Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim. He has a song called Finishing the Hat, which is specifically about the love of creative flow and how that can impact relationships for people who don’t understand that extraordinary connection.
I remember in high school I did musical theater. I sang, but directing was my big passion. I did the visual arts. I was a smorgasbord of creativity, but that specific song connected with me in this weird way. It’s still considered one of his greatest songs, if not his greatest song. He loses the love because he has to finish the hat. He has to be painting. It’s about George Seurat’s painting on a Sunday on the Isle of La Grande Jatte.
Seurat and his dots.
Yes. This fictional character, his love is named Dot. He won the Pulitzer for it. It’s my favorite piece of theater. In reality, now that I’m thinking about it. The second act is about him being a solo. There’s a song called Children and Art. What’s your legacy when you are not traditional? What’s your legacy when you don’t have that traditional path? As an artist, he’s pursuing art. What else can he do? In the first act of the musical, they bring the painting, that very famous pointillist, a large painting. It’s bringing it to life.
The second act takes place 100 years later, where a descendant of George Seurat is a struggling artist who’s not following the path that everybody’s telling him to do because he feels he needs to be an artist, and what he has to show for it? Now as we are talking about a solo, I’m like there’s a reason why this musical means so much to me, even though I left theater behind years ago.
Back to Finishing the Hat in high school, I remember singing it. I was like, “I connect to this song so much,” and they were like, “Why? That makes no sense. This is about a man in the 1800s who’s an artist.” First of all, it was before any woman had ever been nominated for Best Picture Director type of thing.
Rethinking Relationship Norms & The Escalator
I have to editorialize here for a moment because you’ve hit on something that I arrived at fairly early in The Solo Project. The Solo Project started with How do you feel good about being single in a world that doesn’t value it, and then how do you live a good life? You have new problems especially if you are going to be single for a long period. I was very focused on that, but as I started to understand the culture and Amy Gahran who educated me on the relationship escalator, it changed the way I view the world, especially this notion of hierarchy in relationships.
I had always struggled with that when I had a new girlfriend. I was always excited about her. Fortunately, I feel like I have good taste in girlfriends, especially in my 30s and 40s like healthy, happy, good friendship-based relationships, but I always felt constrained. I always felt like I had to leave some of my previous life behind. She took up a lot of space because she was supposed to. Even as well as we got along, there seemed to be this asymmetry where she wanted more time and more attention than I wanted to give because I wanted to give time and attention to this menu of things in my life. At that time, a lot of it was professional endeavors. That’s the same as art.
Career-wise, my career was easy for me. I got an internship in Hollywood at nineteen years old. These are things that are unheard of and incredibly competitive, but those were the opportunities that I was able to seize. That was how in my twenties, a career in the arts was where the doors were but romance was hard. I felt that I was on one path and my friends were on the other. We are talking about the ‘90s and 2000s where you are not to be single. Love is better than everything. You should always have that person above all else, and that was hard for me. I had my relationships. I had all these things, but it was never as easy as these things which are usually very difficult for other people with my career.
It’s funny. It’s a bit of a reversal. Some people are so good at relationships. I used to think that I was bad at relationships, especially romantic relationships, and then I was like, “No, it’s not that.” It’s just that there’s a problem with that form of relationship. I’m good at relationships.
I never had difficulties with the act of a relationship. For me, when I was at your Solo Salon with your book launch, there were two things that you said that were lightbulb moments for me. Number one was being half of a whole. In my twenties, I’m trying to find this person who’s supposed to be my other half, and I’m like, “Who complements me?” My parents have been together for decades. They are the model of a long-term partnership, but they are clearly a yin-yang partnership. I inherited both of their qualities.
I’m like, “What would be my opposite? Who complements me? Who fits me?” I remember looking and seeking, and it didn’t work for me to find that. My relationships now are much more like we have our own lives and we support one another, but we both have our independent lives. It’s strong independence, and that works very well for me. The other piece that you mentioned that was also one of those lightbulb moments from my twenties was that I have always been happiest when I have lots of different communities to go in and out of.
I remember college and when I was living in England, as long as I’m able to not have one person be my one-all be-all but, “They are busy, so I’m going to go talk to them.” I have this part of me that I’m going to talk to them about. Having this tight community of individual relationships and friendships where everybody comes because of that realization that nobody can be your one and only in everything. I have been living like that my whole adult life, and you put it into words. It was inspiring for me to hear that.
I’m happy to hear that. These are ideas that I developed as part of the project. I didn’t have these insights myself. I do like this menu approach. You have a friend to call for X, a friend to call for Y, a family member to call for Z, a community for this, a community for that. That’s important whether or not you are partnered. When you are partnered, it’s just as important.
Unequivocally. I have been seeing a lot of the experts now saying that if you have your partner be your one-all and only in everything, there’s going to be more friction, and there’s going to be more alienation. You are not going to have the satisfaction of being able to have many people in your life who truly, genuinely support you for those pieces. It’s grounded me beautifully through the years.
It’s hard to be everything to a person. I’m good at a lot of things, but I’m not good at everything. Please call your friend for that. There is a phenomenon among friendships, but it also happens with regard to romantic relationships. You are dealing with something very difficult, and you are leaning on this person, and you are leaning on this person, and they are not professional. You are not paying them like you would pay a therapist, and it grinds them down. They become less and less effective, and it can also start to affect your relationship. Having that diverse network is important.
I want to point out something that you said that is important, and I do think it’s one of the potential downsides of the relationship escalator. That is this. If you are an artist, you are a scientist, you are an entrepreneur, or you are a politician, you give a lot to society. You have the potential to give a lot to society. The one in a million or one in a thousand can markedly change the world. I am not sure that I want all our scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and politicians to be riding the relationship escalator, where that one person gets a disproportionate amount of their time and energy. It’s selfish.
Navigating Expectations & Choosing Independence
You are making one person’s life better, but every hour you spend with them and you are not spending in the lab, or you are not spending sculpting, or you are not spending making policy is an hour that the world hurts as a result of that. First of all, most people are not making the world that much better. The average person’s life is average, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Dedicating your time, energy, and attention to your spouse and your children is wonderful. It’s probably one of the most meaningful things that they will end up doing and it’s legacy-inducing. However, there are those few people who we should let go. We should loosen our grip, take them off the leash, let them run free, and see what they can make in the world. You figured this out.
I never thought of it that way ever. No. I had friends who did and they have risen to the top of the creative food chain. I wanted to have that partner. Part of it is when you look at the history of the women who have been able to get ahead, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. These women were pioneers and icons. It’s because they had the husband to either open doors, pick up the slack, or do something. There is something of the gender difference for men to be able to go out, and women have that same confidence and amplification.
Also, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. To be able to have the support, Jane Austen’s sisters took up the slack for her.
For me, I knew that there were times in my life when I was struggling. I felt alone, and when I looked at people around me, I felt myself sinking because I didn’t necessarily have that in-person, in-depth, intimate support network, whether it was the one or the team. That was very difficult for me, and figuring out how to still move forward without that. Fortunately, my parents have always been extraordinary having that safety net for me, but we have never lived together since I was in high school, and we lived across the country from each other.
It’s something where, having that support whatever it is, I knew that the people liked me when I was dealing with abusive work environments. I was rising and there was conflict and all these different pieces. My colleagues, who were able to go home to that person who could relieve the tension, were able to work through that easier than me, and I would absorb it all myself.
I’d like to say there’s no one way to be successful. Within the arts, there is a model of a patron or a manager. The compliments often very much help versus being an academic. Even still, there is a phenomenon in academia of someone who stays home with the kids and takes care of the household and lets stuff happen.
I still have to make all my meals. There are still certain things that when you are solo, you are responsible for everything, but you also have the freedom to prioritize what you are doing.
Indeed. The grass is greener, but it’s difficult to cut. It is true, but what I like to point out is that however you want to craft your life, you ought to be able to do that rather than falling into this default. The problem with the default is you are supposed to not be everything to each other, but you are supposed to do everything with each other.
When I was in the default, that did not last. It was that suffocation you are talking about. I want the support, but we need to have our paths at the same time, our parallel paths. It’s like we are both on our pedestals. We have earned our pedestals, but we are supporting each other on each pedestal.
Creative Journeys: Storytelling & Self-Discovery
Let’s get into the topic. You’ve alluded to some of this. You suggested this topic and called it a creative journey. Let’s get into this. What do you mean by a creative journey?
My reason for thinking of it specifically for this discussion is because I have all my professional work, my work for hire, whether it’s the AP or UN, creating work that’s making an impact outside of things, but I have also always had my art that I do for myself that it’s only for me. I create this stuff for me, maybe for my legacy, maybe when I have the courage at some point to share more of it, which I’m trying to do now. Path to the Palace and Escapades in Caves is the first time I’m sharing something that is a personal story, while so much of what I have done is for big companies, helping organizations, or what have you that’s a creative work for hire as opposed to my art.
The themes throughout that work have been me working through being solo. Path to the Palace, I wrote the story in 2008. It was following a solo travel adventure, as well as a couple of others, that I realized this experience of the escalator. I was in my early 30s, so you are supposed to be married. I was at the height of that pressure. I had this experience of everybody telling me that I have to do this one thing. You are all supposed to go in this one direction, this one path, this one thing. I’m like, “I’m trying and I keep getting shut down. It’s not working for me.”
All I can do, since I’m getting all these no’s, what else can I do that’s true to me? What if you do what feels right, even if people are saying it’s not right? What if you do that instead? The story is me fictionalizing these experiences when I do my path, my own story, and my own experiences, that’s when I get rewarded. The parallel of the relationship escalator, even though that wasn’t fully intended, is a piece of that, the allegory, the parable that I wrote. That’s what it was about.
I wrote this story. It sat on my hard drive forever. I didn’t know what to do with it. It was this short story, a children’s story for all ages, but I didn’t know how to fit it into the traditional market because it’s not a traditional picture book. It didn’t fit the traditional publishing industry. Flash forward to 2023. I knew I had this great story. I didn’t know what to do with it. I also conceived of another part of the concept of caves, and that was also for my solo travels.
When I traveled to Cappadocia in Central Turkey and to Petra in Jordan, I was solo traveling, befriending locals, and bonding over how we all grew up playing in caves. I’m from New Mexico originally. For me, Mesa Verde, Bandelier, Carlsbad Caverns, and the caves in my community but it was this connective thing. We think of caves as part of the Hero’s Journey, this inner cave of darkness, but it’s also where people play. It’s also a shelter. It’s also comfortable. There’s so much beauty in what caves can be.
The full story is I’m from northern New Mexico. The fires decimated my childhood playground. It happened in 2021 or 2022. I can’t remember the exact year now but it was devastating to me. I knew that if I wrote about this for myself, for my healing in a nonfictional way, there was no happy ending. Everything was destroyed.
When I looked back at Path to the Palace, I thought, “I can find a beautiful way and a positive way to find comfort in that duality of the coarseness and the comfort of caves.” I wrote Escapades in Caves in the same style, with a similar word count, and then I thought, “How do I visualize it?” I have a degree in design from Pratt. I’m supposed to be illustrating it. Illustration is the traditional way to tell these stories, but I didn’t know how to illustrate it. It didn’t come right to me but I’m also a photographer, and I realized my photographs express this.
It’s not just the literalness of the places, which is how a lot of photography tends to be expressed, but the visceral emotional feeling of how it felt to experience these things. I was able to edit my photos to show that. Once I realized I could use my photography to bring them to life, it all happened fast. I was able to bring these two stories to life. Since I knew they were completely non-traditional, and there was no way a traditional publisher would look at them, I thought, “Let me self-publish them and put them out in the world because they mean so much to me, but they also mean so much to anybody who’s on their own personal journey, especially an individual journey.”
Some people who were interviewing me asked, “Why is the protagonist on their own?” I said, “Of course, she’s on her own. Why wouldn’t she be on her own?” Everybody still has their own choices for what paths and directions they take. That’s what these two stories are. They are meant to be warm hugs, to be read again and again. When you are stuck in your individual journey, it’s going to be okay.
When you are being 100% honest with yourself, on a scale of 0 to 100, how much did you do these stories for yourself internally motivated versus for some outside benefit or accolades?
The vast majority was for me. I needed to get these stories out of me. I needed to get them in a polished, finished place. It’s been terrifying for me to share them with the world because it is the first time I’m sharing something personal. I have been publishing stuff for years. Some essays I did for the AP, like Grey’s Anatomy, brought in some personal stuff but it was never, “This is my life.” It was more, “This is how I can relate to this,” or “This is that type of thing.” This was the first time I was publishing something that was deep for me. I realized it needed to be out in the world. It needed to be finished, polished, beautiful pieces for myself.
I love the saying, “Don’t die with the song in you,” or something like that. That’s an important question for people to answer if they are the creative types. Is there something inside of you that even scares you to share with the world, but you would sit on your deathbed and say, “I wish I wrote that book,” or “I wish I published that song?”
Because I had Path to the Palace written for so long, at least a couple of times a year, I would reread it and it made me feel so good. Other people need to read it because if it’s making me feel this good, it’s got to help other people as well.
How has it been received?
Everybody who’s read it gives me praise and loves it. The challenge is that I don’t have a big book publisher behind me.
I have got big book publishers behind me. It doesn’t matter.
My challenge is that it’s not a traditional book. It’s a children’s book for adults. It’s for ages 10 to 110. It’s for anybody. Even though the stories themselves are written very traditionally, as in a traditional narrative structure, it’s photography. It’s like, “Is this a photo book? Is it a travel book?” I’m merging these different modalities from traditional publishing. Everybody who holds it, looks at it and reads it, it feels good. To me, that is the joy of them. I know that whoever gets them feels good.
Fictionalizing this gave you a license and solved a major problem. The fact that you were doing it overwhelmingly for yourself, did that also change the process?
Yes. Part of the process was also so for years, I have been writing lyrical poems and song lyrics as my therapy. I’m having a dark time. Let me put it into something else. They are not meant to be shared. Those are 100% for me. I have this bulk of creative work that, at some point, I want to share, but I’m not ready to share it quite yet. I have this archive of stuff.
In the past few years, I have gotten to this point where I have felt I need to dust off the cobwebs and complete them so that they are on the shelf. I’m no longer stewing over them. I’m no longer repeating them. This is my past. Now it’s a beautiful thing. It’s done. That’s what I have been doing for years, all of these old projects that I created for me, for my process. Primarily, I’m a solo. Now that I have a term for it, it’s like, “I’m a solo.” I didn’t know that was a term for all these years. It was just I’m alone, but I don’t necessarily feel alone. I’m being ostracized because of this and how I fit all these different themes together. I have other themes I’m working with as well.
I have too much stuff in my vault, and it needs to be polished to fruition. A lot of that had to do with legacy, COVID, my health issues, and a close death in the family that impacted me very significantly in my life, her wishes for me, and putting together my estate planning, all that stuff made me realize that I need to finish these. Whenever they are published, I’m going to publish them at some point, all of them, but they need to be done.
In terms of the creative journey, going back to the poetry and lyrics stuff, there was one piece that I want to share about how long ago I have been writing about this and creating stuff about this. For my master’s thesis at Pratt Institute, before I had been working at Interbrand, an international brand consultancy firm, where I learned about conceptual storytelling. I was like, “What if instead of doing it for a business, you are doing it for you?”
My master’s thesis was a story I called One, and it’s a conceptual journey about what it means to be one. It was originally a motion graphics movie, and then I was like, “I like the design of that.” A couple of years later, I redesigned it as an inspirational mini-book because it was a designed piece. It was created to be a portfolio piece as a designer but it’s like, “I only have me just me, but I have me with me with me, and I’m a party of one. I have all of these beautiful things as a solo,” and I wrote that in 2001.
To have had this foundation. That One was designed to be shared, but not publishable, because it was too expensive to make but that was the first piece of me tapping into something creatively. I’m different somehow. I don’t fully know why. I don’t fully know how but I’m different somehow, and this is what’s coming out of me creatively to articulate that.
Your journey as a creative and your journey as a solo aren’t in parallel. They are intertwined at times. They cross paths at times. They cross paths with this portfolio piece. They cross paths with these stories. How else have they crossed paths?
Embracing The Solo Path & The Hero’s Journey
This is the big one that is related to some of the stuff you’ve been talking about in your recent episodes in terms of not leading the traditional romantic life, but also when I transitioned from the corporate life to becoming a solopreneur. That was a very bumpy, challenging transition for me. I realized this wasn’t working for me. I’m on the top of the food chain in the national news media in New York City. This doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t feel true to me. I’m by myself. I don’t have a partner. I don’t have all the different ways you are supposed to go out on your own. I didn’t have that.
Also, you’ve got this paycheck.
Yes, and it was a union paycheck. It was full of golden handcuffs in every way and that steady paycheck, that prestige, everything. I was the design director for the Associated Press, and I was in the rooms where people were deciding the fate of journalism and I’m like, “I don’t know if I want to be on that road.”
It’s not going very well.
That’s the thing. I was in the front-row seat when the first things happened. People found out years later, “That’s why you left.” It was like my work was on the homepage of all these websites, and then suddenly, “It was time for me to move on.” I was realizing, “How do I go out on my own?” I had this epiphany when I met someone who had her boutique. It was 2012 and I saw this friend. She had her boutique agency and I’m like, “I don’t want to be a freelancer. I don’t want to be a temp. I don’t want to keep begging people to hire me because that sounds horrible.”
She opened my mindset to say, “You are an expert that solves people’s problems.” Suddenly, I was able to move forward with a sense of confidence. I was visiting her in Boston. I was taking the bus back to New York City, and that’s when I had this epiphany of feeling the same way that I felt when I traveled on my own for the first time. I had this epiphany that I needed to write a book about all of the lessons that I have learned through solo travel that are now helping me decades later learn how to go out on my own professionally and learn how to heal from trauma on my own.
As I was going through this transition to becoming a solopreneur I didn’t even know the term “solopreneur” at the time. I just knew that this was the path. I needed to go there. I was up for jobs at Bloomberg, and Wall Street Journal, and they all still had that same, “This doesn’t feel right.” In the course of writing these stories and reflecting on these lessons, it was my therapy to help me get to the other side of this new life, of this incredibly eclectic, random career that I have and love.
The book isn’t finished yet. I wanted to finish it, but then I had to make money. It is something that the amount of work I have put into it, I know it needs to be out in the world. I just need the time to go back to it and help it because I wrote the story There Are People Who Will Help You, inspired by a solo travel trip when I was fourteen years old, learning things go wrong. Who do you help? At the same time, I had to hire my first lawyer.
Sometimes you have to jump a waterfall which I did during a solo travel in New Zealand but again, it was terrifying. This is what happens when your lawyer takes the legal action forward. When you are doing these terrifying things and circling forward, you will have bad days. That’s part of life. You are going to have those bad days. That’s where the creative process within myself and my solo journey reflecting back on my history helped me move forward and transition.
One of the wonderful things about writing a book, and I think more people should write books, given this insight and I did not anticipate this when I wrote my first, certainly, is that the act of writing the book ought to change you because you have a discovery process that’s happening as part of the creation. Even if you never publish your book, you’ve already benefited from the process of doing it. This book might end up becoming a calling card for you of sorts, a lot of the benefits are already recognized.
That is why it’s been harder for me to go back to it because I’m like, “I’m on the other side of it now. I don’t need it as much.”
When I heard you talk about the solo journey and about how you need help. We need help. To me, the solo life is not a life of isolation. However, some people prefer more solitude than less. Some people are more antisocial than others, and so on but for the most part, you still need a doctor at times. You still need a dentist at times. You might need a lawyer at times, a financial planner, the person to do your plumbing, or a shoulder to cry on to varying degrees. I’m reminded of the Hero’s Journey. I have read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell, as well as a bunch of other books. I’m sure we have read a bunch of these scriptwriting books.
A writer’s journey.
That is a very common story structure. I was feeling very wistful and I rewatched Star Wars. I was 7-ish or 8-ish when that movie came out. It holds up shockingly well because it’s such a wonderful Hero’s Journey. The thing about the Hero’s Journey that I have always liked and I always ask this question are you the hero in this story of your life? I like to ask that question. It is a solo journey, mostly. Now, you have allies and enemies. Obi-Wan comes into Luke’s life. Han Solo comes into Luke’s life. He’s essential for Luke’s success.
I have always liked that structure, and what I also often find difficult about watching these. I was watching this movie. I have seen this movie many times in my life. I’m not one of these Star Wars nerds or whatever. I have an appreciation for it. I’m a Star Wars guy, not a Star Trek guy. Not to divide the solo community.
We are X-ers, so it’s part of how we grew up.
It is. It’s impossible. It’s the one movie I remember. That with Fantasia. I watched it and it’s culminating. It’s about to climax. In the movie, Luke is in the trench on the Death Star and it’s just him and these three TIE fighters, including Darth Vader, who are behind him. I’m gripping the pillow. I know how it turns out and I’m still so transported by this moment in time. It’s a wonderful structure but the thing that makes me anxious watching movies is that the journey is hard.
The best movies feel like it’s not going to happen. It feels insurmountable. One farm boy versus Darth Vader and the Death Star. That’s a useful reminder when life is hard. It’s no guarantee that it’s going to turn out like in the movies. It is a reminder that a lot of things that are worth doing including living are going to have moments where it feels insurmountable. It feels difficult. Writing a book can feel that way.
The whole creative process can. I’m starting a new semester. I teach at multiple schools. Narrative design has been the class I have taught the most, although I’m not teaching it this semester but I teach design, journalism, and business. I teach at different schools, teaching all those things but I always use Star Wars as an example when I’m talking about storytelling because it’s such a universal understanding and everybody’s seen it, everybody understands it. In terms of talking it’s also Lord of the Rings. It’s also Episode VII. It’s also Moana. It’s like when you start seeing that structure play out in different ways, it’s the most used structure framework.
That struggle, that “Inmost Cave” that’s the step. It’s called the “Inmost Cave,” which is part of my inspiration for Escapades in Caves. For both One and Escapades in Caves the Hero’s Journey was a framework I was playing with because it does have that value of that individual overcoming that isolation and that darkness but you still overcome it. The Hero’s Journey is a powerful tool but for me, as somebody who also teaches narrative theory and helps people with storytelling, it’s not the only one.
That was a major insight I had fairly early on in this process. In the project for my second book, Shtick to Business, I had very heavy editorial help. It was interesting because it was supposed to be almost ghostwriting and then I realized, “No, I need to write this.” We transitioned the relationship to be a hands-on editor there, and her name’s Kimberly Kessler. She’s a wonderful human being. One day she said to me, there’s this other story structure that exists. This woman, Kim Hudson, I’m sure other people have written about this or noticed, but Kim has done the seminal work on The Virgin’s Promise. I write about The Virgin’s Promise in my book.
That’s how I learned about it. I was like, “I know all these structures that I hadn’t heard of The Virgin’s Promise.”
I found that The Virgin’s Promise for a lot of solos is a better story structure. I don’t know how you feel about that.
Before I answer it, I want to add a few more things. We are talking about traditional narrative structures. We are very much talking about characters in worlds with conflicts to resolve, obstacles to overcome, and problems to solve, and they tend to be a linear story. Where there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s the most dominant form of storytelling and the Hero’s Journey is the most common for that, but you also have your Aristotle’s Poetics.
You have a different type of stories either the hero goes on a journey or a stranger arrives to disrupt the world. There are a lot of different things, but The Virgin’s Promise, I’m going to let you talk about it because you know it a little bit more in-depth but it begins a little more passive. To me, it’s a little bit more that a stranger arrives. You are in your place and then things start happening to you, and then you have to figure out how to move forward within that.
Non-Traditional Storytelling & The Virgin’s Promise
That’s why I feel like it fits the solo better, and as a preview for the audience members, we are going to talk about these non-traditional story structures. That’s what we are going to finish with. One of the ways to best illustrate it is to talk about some stories that have that structure, so Bend It Like Beckham has it. Frozen and Legally Blonde. My favorite is Billy Elliot’s.
For people who are not familiar with Billy Elliot, if you want a good cry, it’s about a little Irish boy whose dad wants him to box. He wants him to be a boxer, and Billy wants to be a dancer. What he does is he sneaks away and takes dance classes and is quite good, and he’s so good that in the end, I’m going to spoil it. When it’s revealed that he has been doing this and he dances, people are overjoyed. They get it. Including his father. Happy ending.
The beauty of The Virgin’s Promise regarding the solo community is that you are uncovering your true self. Getting the confidence and the support of being true to who you are in the world that you are in.
In the Hero’s Journey, there’s a call to action. You resist it, then you go, and you leave your world and win.
You explode the Death Star at the time. That’s why every Star Wars movie ends with the exploding Death Star or you finally get the ring in Mordor. Whatever it is, there’s this big grand individual above all odds conquering the impossible.
That’s right. In The Virgin’s Promise, you may have to escape your ordinary. In this, you don’t go to a cave, you walk in the wilderness, but you have some special power. It’s what it is. There is some special power that you have, an ability to dance, for example. In Frozen, it is Elsa. The conflict is, “Do I make myself small to fit in? Do I let something special about me die and wither away or do I embrace it?” I’m getting emotional. “Do I let it out?” The kingdom is changed as a result of that. It’s so powerful.
What I think about this is that a lot of people who are solo or single make themselves small. They apologize and I have been thinking a lot about advocacy work. I see there are these three levels of advocacy. Anybody who tunes in can engage in it first and they ought to, which is you can change the world by living your best life as a single person.
You don’t have to advertise it, you don’t have to preach, you don’t have to tell people about the show or the movement. That’s the second level. You have to be you at your best self and let the world be like, “Carrie is living a remarkable life. She doesn’t have a husband and she doesn’t have kids. What a life?” That’s important to be able to do. That’s why I like The Virgin’s Promise. I have an episode with Kim Hudson. That’s worth tuning in to if this intrigues people. You were saying there are other traditional structures.
Non-traditional. The tradition is a general stranger arrives or someone leaves. All TV shows begin with the pilot episode. It’s either something changes the status quo or whoever’s going is going on a journey.
I had a GI virus and I sat in front of the TV on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and with frequent trips to the loo. I watched Reacher. It is not for everyone. It’s a dad movie. It’s a dad show, but Reacher comes into this town.
In traditional storytelling, you have three different conflicts. You have man versus man, which is what most people focus on.
I was watching the Rocky.
Although now I say character versus character because the gender history, that’s where a lot of possibilities are to break those gender stereotypes but it is man versus man, character versus character. That’s the bulk of what people talk about, and that’s what most traditional stories are about but then you also have the character versus their environment, which you are being in the natural world or whatever happens, but the conflict is a storm’s coming or a recession is coming but it’s not other people.
It’s Twister. It’s Margin Call.
Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and those types of things. You also have the one that for solos in the traditional realm is man versus himself, character versus themselves where Cast Away is one of the more famous movies. That’s very much about it. Tom Hanks figuring out how to communicate with Tom Hanks on this deserted island. It’s not one that is used very often, although, in literature, it’s used a bit more. Fight Club, that’s another one, but they turned it into man versus man in a way by creating that different part of who you are. At its core its character versus themselves.
As a solo, we have that relationship nurtured. Far more than when we are focusing on it always has to be outside of ourselves because we can have a beautiful relationship with ourselves and that’s part of why I now use the term, I don’t like to say I’m alone. I say I’m with myself because I am with myself. Solitude is a beautiful thing, and if I’m in the creative process, I’m having this dialogue with this other thing that’s another part of me.
When I’m traveling on my own, I’m with myself in the world I’m with, and that’s my connection. You can feel so connected with yourself, so connected with the outside world, and connected with other people, but you are going to have more conflict with other people as well and the peace that I can find with myself, my environment, and my creativity, that’s something that, because I struggled a lot with feeling alone and loneliness and isolation. Especially when you are dealing with recovering from trauma, especially when you are dealing with recovering from major health problems and you don’t necessarily have the full support you need. That’s when you are alone. That’s when you are lonely, but you can also fully be with yourself.
I’m going to sound like a jerk. I am tremendously entertaining to myself. I’m a good company. I find myself interesting. I know that sounds incredibly egotistical or even narcissistic, but I don’t think it is. That should be normal.
In terms of a starting place, I don’t even know how to create, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to use with this process. Having all this, doing all these things, publishing books or what have you, at its core, the act of journaling. I’m an avid journaler. I have been journaling since college. It’s not necessarily every day. Sometimes it’s daily, weekly, monthly, and sometimes I can go a few months without writing. For me, the beauty of journaling is that I’m having a conversation with myself, and the act of having this dialogue and working through different pieces of me, and there’s a reason why it has therapeutic qualities.
I journal often and I’d be horrified if people read my journal. It’s so riddled with anxiety. It’s the place I put that stuff. It’s not a creative place for me. I don’t dance.
For me, what happens is that I will vent-process. When I travel, I like to travel like, “This was my day. I want to tell somebody what my day was like.” When I do solo travel, that’s when I’m the most avid journaler. It’s part of the process. There’s also that I can be journaling and working with something deep, and then suddenly I will have a turn of phrase, and then that will turn into a creative project outside of journaling.
Alternative Storytelling: Breaking Traditional Narratives
My specialty creatively has been in alternative storytelling throughout my whole career. Even though I started in the traditional with Hollywood literature, that’s the foundation. When I got into branding, design, and journalism, I was doing all the alternative types. To define an alternative, it would be conceptual storytelling, cross-format storytelling where you are mixing different things, as well as data storytelling or infographics, but there are also pictorial shapes that can create these structures.
You are like Picasso. He’s attributed this saying, I’m sure someone else said it, which is, “Learn the rules like a professional so you can break them like an artist.”
I didn’t know that one, but for us in grad school, it was, “Learn the rules, so you learn how to break them.” That was the foundation that I was taught, but at the Associated Press, I worked in the graphics and interactives department, which doesn’t exist anymore in news outlets for the most part. We were needed because we were telling stories that couldn’t be told through traditional methods.
Whether it’s something happening in outer space, something happening within the human body, election results, the red and blue maps, all these things. Showing the photos with the writing, with the timeline, merging all the different media to help people fully comprehend what’s going on as opposed to just reading the story, looking at the photo, watching the video, and listening to the audio. That’s where the term alternative storytelling in journalism because it’s like, “You do the alternative stuff,” but that was the department I worked in for twelve years.
In terms of getting into types of structures, there’s the non-linear in general. Non-linear means that it’s still can be characters in a world with conflicts, but that would be out of order. You can go backward in time. You can go flash forward, flash sideways, flash backward. Gaming, you go in all these different directions, and choose your adventure. If I go here, I can do this, but if I can step back and then do something else. Those would be the non-linear stories. Still within the traditional realm.
It’s like Memento, Pulp Fiction, and Sliding Doors.
Sliding Doors, Lost, This Is Us, and then you also have something like The Affair, that TV show on Showtime, that was everybody’s having their perspectives being repeated because everybody’s exploring things differently. That would be still in the traditional realm because your characters are in a world with conflict, but it’s out of order.
What I like to add to that is that our actual physical lives are linear, but our memories and our dreams are not. There’s still a very natural way of, “We can go this way, but that way didn’t work. Let’s turn around and go back.” We do backtrack in our lives. We don’t always have to always go forward. That would be the non-linear world that we can be in, but the three specific structures I wanted to share are much more pictorial.
There is a book called Meander, Spiral, Explode, that talks about how patterns in nature can come across in ways that you can create stories and still in the linear, traditional way. I also have these experiences with infographics, like all these different ways of still connecting. My definition of a story is communication with the intent to create a connection, make an impression, and elicit an emotional reaction.
That’s on my website, YourStoryGPS, where I go into this a little bit more. For me, what it comes down to is a story about how people connect with other people. You put something out there and somebody else feels something, whether it’s, “Cool. Wow,” but there’s a feeling that’s created and in infographics too. “Ew. Oh, my God, that’s horrible.” That’s valid too. Because I spent so much time doing infographics and data visualization, it’s, “That’s cool. That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.” Sometimes it’s like, “I want to cry,” or things like that.
A picture can be a story.
The three structures I want to share specifically for the solo community are symbols, but there’s a visual image that gives us a sense of direction, meaning, and purpose. The first two are a little more relaxed. The first one I want to share is the burst, also known as explode. I prefer burst because it has a little bit more of a positive energy to it. You have your essence, and then you are going off in all these different directions, but still being true to that core.
Branding is a high-level brand strategy. That’s what it is. Think differently, and then from there, you get the iPad, the iPhone. You have the Apple Watch, but that’s in business. That would be the strategic side of the burst. From a solo perspective, it’s like I’m me in this world, I’m a burst of light. Where are all the different places I can go? I’m not trapped in this very specific structure. I can do all these different things that I enjoy, and because it’s a burst, whether it works or not, you still go back to your core. That’s the first one.
The second one related, it might be a different visual to help people see it would be the tree. Trees can be interpreted in different ways. In a practical way, I have used the tree to create an organizational chart or a family tree. That’s where you can start seeing the application of the structure to still help people understand how people are related to one another. With the solo, you are the trunk. You have your roots, you are able to continually grow, and you are going to continually change and evolve with the season.
You might need to prune a couple of branches.
Exactly. Whether it’s the seasons or whatever it is, and then I was also thinking of The Giving Tree. That amazing story. What a good cry but it’s still anchored, it’s still true. It’s still whatever happens, however much you grow, however much you change, you are still you, but you can continue to grow and evolve. Fractals, I have also heard that one is a way to expand the tree structure, but it’s still you are you, but you can evolve and change, and you are not always the leaves that fall. You are the tree.
Before we get to the third one, the burst, the tree. I like both of these. These are ways to think about yourself in your relationships, your endeavors, and your communities, but they are also ways to think about telling a story. Are there examples that people might be able to intuit from the burst and the tree?
For me, it’s why Apple is the strongest brand in the world, it would be for the burst. It’s a bit harder to understand. The burst to me is the best one. Target, whatever they do, they are always that core. On the business side, it’s easier to see, but everybody has their brand, and it gets into influencing. I don’t like that side when people talk about branding, but for me, it’s a character. You are your own person doing these different things. It’s also even the core concept. Escapades in Caves, even though I have the story, it’s all about a cave. I’m exploring all the different ways you are interpreting how one connects and feels with caves. The tree obviously is a family tree or character tree.
When you said it, that made sense.
There’s that way to do it, but as I was thinking about the solo community, why it’s one I felt can be powerful is our roots are history, but we still can grow and evolve and change and modify, and the change is part of who we are. My third is the one that’s meant the most to me through my solo journey. It is the spiral.
Specifically, as a solo, dealing with health challenges on your own, recovery can feel especially unstable. In whatever type of injury, whether it’s a physical injury, recovering from surgery, it’s an emotional trauma of relation, or whatever it is, recovery is not linear. You’ll always have good days and bad days. You’ll always have a few steps forward, then a few steps back. You are always moving back and forth.
When I heard about the spiral, how is that recovery? That is the journey. That is how you are transitioning into whatever is next for you. You are going to have the highs and lows. You can have a downward spiral where we get into our darkness. We can have the upward spiral where we are pulling ourselves out of it, and we feel ourselves above water, but we can also have the spiral where we are focusing on our new place and our new direction, going inward.
We can do the outer spiral where we are liberating ourselves from constraints, but it’s never linear. There’s always going to be the positives and the negatives that come with that journey. In Eastern philosophy, I have seen, “Here’s the spiral of recovery,” and things like that, but when it’s your journey and your path, and you are like, “How can I grab hold of who I am and where I’m going and what I’m doing,” this spiral is the one that has helped me a lot.
That seems quite apt for me at the moment, personally.
It’s not even a transition, but it feels like it’s this never-ending transition when it’s like, “I’m holding on for dear life, and how can I keep moving and how can I get unstuck?” Instead of being stuck, you are like, “There is movement. There can still be movement and there’s a way to keep working on it,” but also to give yourself permission to have crappy days. To give yourself permission to say, “This is life. It’s okay for me to be sad right now. It’s okay for me to be angry. It’s okay for me to feel discouraged and demoralized,” but then because you are on that upward swing, it feels so good.
There is this dichotomy of life that you need darkness to have light. You need silence in order to have sound. You need death to have life.
Kahlil Gibran’s poem on joy and sorrow is one of my favorite pieces of writing ever because it’s a pendulum. Joy and sorrow. You need both to appreciate both.
You never know how good your life is until it gets bad. I certainly can appreciate that. Even understanding the imagery of the spiral makes it clear, but is there another way to intuit it, a story of another?
It’s something where you are working through creating a story, it’s acknowledging that if everything’s good.
I know. No one wants to read that story.
Nobody wants to read this story or hear the story about everything being great or everything being horrible. Everything needs to have the duality of the positive and the negative, the louds and the softs, the darks and the lights. We need that variety to be human and to connect with one another.
It’s why I hate a lot of these autobiographical business books. Many of these folks make themselves seem so smart, able, and great. I recommend this book to my students. This guy Ben Horowitz wrote a book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things. It’s one of the best management books ever because he’s so vulnerable, and he talks about how difficult it was, and how it almost didn’t work out, and there’s so much more to learn from that.
Even when you think of traditional social media where you either say everything’s amazing or it’s the ultimate tragedy. There’s a lot more nuance that makes the world a beautiful place.
Building A Creative Community & The Power Of Authenticity
The final question is what is YourStoryGPS?
YourStoryGPS is my new venture where I’m helping people excavate their own stories. Whether you are an entrepreneur and you are trying to figure out for business strategic advantage, a professional positioning themselves in the market, but also you know you want to be creative, you know you have things to say, you know you want to do something, but you want to be you. There are so many resources out there for people who want to either create or follow the traditional path.
You can read The Hero with a Thousand Faces or 10,000 Faces and you can then try to write your Hero’s Journey.
If you want to be a writer, follow the traditional path of the traditional types of stories, there are so many resources out there. The moment you want to start merging the visual and the verbal to have a multisensory story, with AI, it’s so derivative with all of these formulas and structures and the resources. If you want to look and sound and feel like everybody else, there are tons of resources out there.
If you want to look and feel specifically like you and only you, that’s the program that I’m developing. I’m already working with individual clients. I’m hoping to start building more of a creative community where ultimately people can start sharing that distinction and that specificity of who they are in a beautiful way that still resonates with the community.
You are doing coaching.
It’s coaching, it’s programs, it’s individual collaborating, having that feedback of going through that process and not being alone in the process. As we talked about it, you are always going to hit that wall in the creative process. There’s always a moment when you are like, “I suck. The world sucks. Why in the world am I doing this?” How do you push through? How do you still remember that there’s value because it’s going to get hard?
The messy middle, as they call it.
It always gets hard. That’s part of the process, and so to have that additional support to keep you going, that’s what I love to do more than anything. It’s not just my own stories, but I love bringing other people’s stories to life. That’s my favorite thing to do whether as an art director, a theater director, an art professor, all these things. What’s in you? Let’s excavate it, make it beautiful, and have it connect.
Where should people go?
If you go to YourStoryGPS, you can join the mailing list or reach out to me, and we can have a conversation.
That’s very exciting. It’s fun seeing these different elements of your life. You are a traditional educator at universities, you are the solopreneur. This is bringing both of those things together.
That is my goal. I felt too segmented and this is very much the narrative design class that I taught for years that I loved. It’s still limited. More people can benefit from this, and for the clients that I work with, it’s like this is what I do anyway, but let’s bring it together and merge this to bring a lot more beauty, joy, and connection to the world. That’s my goal.
To bring stories that connect, engage, and create emotion.
My tagline is, “Create to connect,” because there are people who make to make, which is fine. There’s value to it. If you are creating specifically because you want to have those connections with other people and feel more resonance and connection with the world and your environment, that’s what I want to help people do.
Hearing you say that has made me think a little bit about the solo community that I’m creating with this show. It’s one direction mostly. I arbitrarily made a decision to create a community. There’s a message board. People can sign up for it at PeterMcGraw.org/solo. One of the things that has been very nice about that board, and even that I have a contact form on my website is I get the most supportive messages at times because I let my troubles out sometimes.
Whether it be on the community message board or on the show, the amount of support that I have gotten from people in terms of offering support, offering thanks, whatever it is, I have been moved to tears by emails from strangers, but they don’t feel like strangers because they know me. I have never met them, but I know their essence. I like the idea of “Create to connect” and that it can happen in ways that you may not anticipate.
Even if you don’t even know where to go, my vocabulary is so expansive that it’s just, “I will work with you to help you figure out where to start.”
Carrie, thanks for coming into the Solo studio.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s an absolute joy. I’m thrilled. I have been one of those people that as soon as you first started the Solo community, I’m like, “This is my people,” and to now be a part of it. You’ve created something beautiful.
That’s very kind.
Thank you.
Cheers.
Important Links
- Carrie Osgood
- Path to the Palace
- Escapades in Caves
- YourStoryGPS
- A Room of One’s Own
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces
- Shtick to Business
- The Virgin’s Promise
- Meander, Spiral, Explode
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things
- The Solo’s Promise
- Hygge
- Getting Off The Relationship Escalator
- The Promise Of A Brighter Kingdom
About Carrie Osgood
Carrie Osgood empowers businesses, organizations and individuals to communicate with impact through all they show and say, providing effective solutions to complex storytelling, branding and education challenges across all media.
With a lifetime devoted to continually expanding her narrative design arsenal (reflected in her wide range of published work), Carrie specializes in guiding individuals through their distinctive creative processes, from igniting the sparks of innovation to producing a final result that radiates a confident clarity.
She began her career in Hollywood, professional theater and at Interbrand, one of the world’s largest brand consultancy firms. She went on to spend close to a dozen years in the Graphics and Interactives departments at the Associated Press.
Since launching her business C.L.O. Communications in 2012, she has created content for major international organizations including the United Nations and Columbia University’s Earth Institute. She has also provided creative leadership to assorted high-achieving businesses driven to improve people’s lives.
In addition to her businesses, she teaches creative communications part time at multiple universities in the Denver-Boulder area.
Her published writing, photography and infographics have connected with audiences all around the world, and her work has been recognized with numerous industry awards, including a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.
Publications available for purchase include her pair of allegorical picture books for all ages, Path to the Palace and Escapades in Caves, and her Data Atlas of the World.
Learn more at CarrieOsgood.com and YourStoryGPS.com