WHAT IS TRUE STORY?
The True Story Project is a mashup of story and song. Specifically, the spoken-word combined with the acoustic song. What’s especially unique is that the songs and stories were written by separate artists at separate times.
That all figures, though. Because we believe artistic creation is a fundamentally unique and seminal endeavor. Collaboration happens afterward. And when artists collaborate, the planet gets better.
ERIC VALENTINE | WRITER-STORYTELLER
Mr. Valentine is a professional writer with a career in marketing and journalism. He is a seasoned public speaker known for heart-wrenching and mind-opening prose and rhyme. His uncanny gift of connecting with an audience triggers the full gamut of human emotion. Mr. Valentine compels an audience with humorous insights as well as deeply authentic and vulnerable expressions of thought.
Career Accomplishments
In the late 90s, Mr. Valentine wrote “fake news” jokes for Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update segment. By the new millennium, he was working as a newspaper reporter in California, where he won a Best Spot News Coverage award from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. In 2004, Mr. Valentine left the journalism world to focus on advertising and marketing, where he won multiple industry awards for his TV and corporate video copywriting.
His marketing, journalism and job search coaching is done through his business identity, Independent Creativity.
Life Experience
Mr. Valentine holds degrees in Psychology and Philosophy from UCLA, and for 3 years worked and lived in Tokyo, Japan as an English teacher. At 25, he lost his first wife to cancer. Mr. Valentine views this and other life experiences as part of a necessary path toward being a better person and a better writer. He draws on his educational background and life experiences to deliver powerful speeches and narratives on:
- Coping with grief and loss
- Maintaining mental and spiritual clarity
- Goal setting and teamwork
- Optimism versus pessimism
- Turning random tragedy into meaningful beauty