People can tell amazing stories without any special preparation, but I rarely improvise without a score. Ten minutes is a long time, and I want to make the best of it. Writing, rewriting, and editing helps me do that. Most stories traded across bars and campfires and kitchen tables take far less than ten minutes to tell, and people typically lose interest when a companion monopolizes a conversation for ten minutes at a stretch. The last thing you want to do as a performer is extend a natural five-minute story out to ten minutes just because that was the timeslot given you. Ten minutes allows for and even encourages the inclusion of multiple interrelated stories. Stories can be tied together by a theme or a common character, or smaller stories can be embedded into a main storyline, or stories can be allowed to weave in and out of one another like the strands of twine that make up a rope—reinforcing each other in the process.  Almost every piece in this collection can be broken down into several sub-stories that conspire to create a whole. Writing a piece down is a good way to play with structure, to figure out how to assemble the pieces, to find the shape of the story..