“Learn to write about the ordinary. Give homage to old coffee cups, sparrows, city buses, thin ham sandwiches. Make a list of everything ordinary you can think of. Keep adding to it. Promise yourself, before you leave the earth, to mention everything on your list as least once in a poem, short story, newspaper article.”

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones.

Artists and writers have a lot in common with storytellers, including the office variety of raconteur. Sometimes you feel like you’ve run out of ideas, or the ones you have don’t work. If you are short on stories and you need one right now, it’s time to throw the dice.

When my children were young and I desperately needed a break, I would book one week each summer at an art college to study drawing or ceramics. One year, I had a teacher who had us mark up sugar cubes as though they were dice. One die was for the drawing device we would use. If you threw a one, then your next drawing had to be in pencil; a two meant it was in charcoal, a three in pen and ink, and so on. The second die was to help decide whether you would draw for 30 seconds or 30 minutes; whether the model would be reclining or moving about. Throwing the dice took all the angst and guesswork out of drawing and made it possible to experiment and generate a lot of work quickly.

To create your own game of storytelling dice, draw up a list of everyday items you could use as story reference points. A quick list could include: coffee cups, mail, taxi drivers, couriers, Monday morning meetings, and photocopy machines. There are legions of stories about photocopy jams and the heroes who fix them. So too about office coffee cups stacked under “wash your own dishes” signs.

Let’s say I decide that a “three” on the die represents taxi drivers, and I throw a three. I could tell you the story of Achmad, an illiterate taxi driver who gave me a hair-raising ride to work one day in Jakarta. During our 30 minutes together he told me his story, a moving testament to living in the moment and learning to trust in the Unseen. At the time, my own trust levels were low and my ability to “be present”, minimal. Our drive was also memorable because he was driving at breakneck speeds, five abreast in three lanes of traffic, and probably thinking “Inshah Allah” to himself as he careened between cars. I prayed fervently that this Unseen power was going to keep us safe!

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When generating new ideas and stories, remember not to edit too soon – consider possibilities, write them down if you like, test them with a friend or colleague, but don’t worry if your story is a “good” one early on, or if anyone else will like it. Just put it out there and then reflect on the narrative before you get out your shears.

By working through exercises like these, you will come to appreciate that fodder for storytelling is all around you. Record it all, even the small stuff. Keep a desk diary, or one on your bedside table. Enter ideas in your personal organizer. Learn to observe and listen and Be Present! as that taxi driver in Indonesia reminded me 20 years ago.

Let storytelling teach you about life and life about storytelling.