"Everyone, of course, loves a good story. My son Jacob, however, simply loves a story—regardless of its quality. Unfortunately, there are times when the last thing I want to hear is, "Dad, tell me a story!"

"That’s because telling a story requires me to stop my obsessive thought patterns and rest in the moment, however mundane it seems. My wife says I’m a good story teller because I have a good imagination. That’s not true. I tell good stories and I tell lousy stories. The difference between the two has to do with my being mentally present to the possibilities of the moment.

"To tell a good story, I need to be patient, deliberate, and be willing to explore every meaningless tangent that’s possible. The tangents are produced by my own reactions to my own words. A story may start with, "There once was a snail named Sammy who lived in East Baltimore," but a good story will then stop and divert to how Sammy got his name -- which naturally would involve something about his parents, and perhaps how they came to live in East Baltimore. Each of these diversions may offer short stories of their own. The beauty of going down these side streets is that if I get caught in a dead end, I simply return to the main story with a simple, "but that’s another story for another time, where was I?" Somehow, Jacob always knows.

"What I’ve learned is that these digressions are actually the key to pulling off a good story. As Sammy’s story progresses, there are countless opportunities to pull items or themes or ideas I’ve created and left on the side streets. For instance, Sammy may live in East Baltimore because his parents are Latino and his Father’s name is Ferdinand—named by his parents after the great Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Now that is a meaningless tidbit at the point I speak it—one produced by nothing but silly reflexive associations in my flea-like brain. But later, I may have Sammy go exploring himself, because of the power of my own suggestion.

"The other key for me is to have no end in sight when I begin. When I start a story with a moral or biblical truth in mind for story’s end, the story flops. When Sammy the snail starts without any ending in mind, he ends up jump-roping his way into some moral discovery that surprises even me. "Begin with the end in mind" is not one of my seven habits of good story telling. It’s like taking a walk in the park just to get to the other side. In striving to get to the end, I miss the journey. And the journey is always the story."

Share your reactions to Peter's post -- and your own secrets for telling stories -- in the comments section below.