Mooney: I think writer’s block is one of those things that if you think you have it, you have it. Gilsdorf: Does it work for so-called writer’s block? Does writer’s block even exist? The Storymatic encourages you to unite elements that you might not usually expect to go together, and it encourages you to see where those elements take you. It’s a little hard for me to view the cards as random, because so much thought went into them. You draw the cards and you just know there’s a story there. I wanted to make something that opened the pipeline to stories that are already in the air around us. That’s how I view things, and that’s the governing principle I had in mind in creating The Storymatic. If I were a sculptor and you asked me where my work came from, I would say it was already present in the stone. Mooney: I believe that stories are all around us, and we just need to let them find us. Gilsdorf: How do you think The Storymatic works? Is there something about randomness that makes us more creative? Some of the kids wanted to buy The Storymatic from me in class, and when I told them there was only one Storymatic and it was all mine, they said I was an idiot for not making more than one and selling it. For a few years, I kept tinkering and tinkering, and the prompt got bigger and bigger. At Putney, I put it on colored construction paper and put the cards in a little box. The prompt went pretty well, so I took it to my high school summer classes at The Putney School Summer Programs. Back then, it was a few slips of white paper in a lunch bag. The Storymatic started as a prompt back when I was teaching fiction workshop at Marlboro College. Mooney: I like making up my own writing prompts and exercises. Gilsdorf: Where did you get the idea for The Storymatic? I had a chance to ask Mooney about where The Storymatic came from and what people are using it for, among other questions.
He’s also taught creative writing at Marlboro College (Vermont) and the University of Massachusetts, and he’s been with The Putney School Summer Programs (in Vermont) since 1998. Among his cool literary credentials and publications, his short stories have been presented by Leonard Nimoy at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Paramount Studios, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. That hasn’t worked out yet (so far, anyway), so instead, Mooney became a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The tool – if you want to call The Storymatic a tool – is the brainchild of Brian David Mooney, a guy who grew up in Western Massachusetts and assumed he would be a baseball player when he grew up. Brian David Mooney, the brains behind The Storymatic
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