I'm sitting here at my desk on a Wednesday evening, doing my "It's Business Time" homework for the week, which is to come up with a small business offering that I can try out on a guinea pig client, and I'm thinking about storytelling.

Because: On the one hand, I remember being a little kid in the early 1990s, before "storytelling" was a marketing buzzword, and going to a storytelling festival in the Appalachians with my Dad while we were visiting my grandmother at her summer condo in North Carolina. I remember sitting enthralled listening to a storyteller, and thinking, "I want to do that!"

I also remember being a kid with no television living in a cabin in the woods outside of Baddeck, and how I used to take a plaster coat hanger, sit on my bedroom floor, and tap-tap-tap the hanger against the floor while I told stories to my little brother. We called it "bonking". Sometimes we'd sit there for hours.

But: On the other hand, I do feel "storytelling" has become a buzzword. And my poet's gut tells me to shy away from buzzwords, to discard cliches, to find my own way to say a thing.

Both hands are out. Both have valid points. But the one that tells me to claim to word "storyteller" wins.

So, back to my homework. We'll see where this goes!