Writing Together

NOTE: This intensive workshop requires both pre-registration (by July 17) and prior submission of 1-3, double-spaced pages of your own writing (by July 24).
Amy Hempel writes, “I meet a person, and in my mind I’m saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.” This is true for readers as well. Once you capture your readers’ attention, your job is to hold it so your story becomes part of their own experience, takes up residence in their own memory, becomes a memoir that has mattered to them. In this workshop we will be working closely with each other and with your own writing to increase the chance this happens. Topics include using your opening paragraphs to show them “the spark,” continuing to add questions your readers will crave the answers to, becoming a narrative voice that, in Kelly Corrigan’s words, your readers “will want to spend three (or three hundred) pages with.” In addition, we will be working on revealing your characters’ complications (including yours) through actions and increasing the resonance of your writing by adding a third arc to the usual two: narrative and character. There’s a lot more. Annie Dillard tells the would-be memoir writer, “You have to take pains not to hang on the readers’ arms, like a drunk, and say ‘And then I did this, and it was so interesting’.” Memoir can become more memorable; this intensive workshop helps you discover how.