Preparing for Memoir Workshop

I just ordered three books by Mary Karr: The Liar's Club, Cherry, and Lit. Hope to read all three of these memoirs in preparation for a conversation I will attend in late October with the author, titled Inside the "Writer's Studio with Mary Karr." The description of the session sounds interesting. "Gossip could be leaked. Craft secrets uncovered. Deeper truths laid bare concerning: memory's fallibilities, the humidity of Texas, and if Radcliffe is actually a real live part of Harvard."
 
By attending programs such as this, I hope to hone my own writing skills. You may remember that memoir is one of the three categories of writing that I want to pursue.

“Writing Your First Novel” Workshop

 











Recently a friend of mine recommended the Lighthouse WritersWorkshop, where numerous opportunities are available for writing classes, retreats, and camaraderie. Since my friend has published three excellent books, and I really respect his abilities, I thought I’d check it out.

I was delighted to see that many of the classes offered at Lighthouse address the needs of serious writers who are more advanced.

Today I attended a two-hour session at Lighthouse titled Writing Your First Novel. It was free, part of the One Book Denver program. I wanted to test the waters before investing money, time, and effort. I can tell you that this initial session far exceeded my expectations. Now I am very excited to join the organization and get involved.

The facilitator, who has published three novels and has been teaching at Lighthouse for 11 years, provided a handout that I will use over and over again. The handout, was the basis for a series of exercises where we explored great openings, creation of characters and locations, and development of tension in the story.

While I already have much material that I would like to weave into a novel, I have lacked a common thread that pulls it all together. Today’s exercises helped me clarify my characters and point of view and to see directions that I might take the story. I also realized that for me, it will not work best to start writing at the beginning of the novel and continue through to the end; instead, I need to write bits and pieces clearly and then fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle.

I can hardly wait to begin.

Love of Writing

As long as I can remember, I have loved to write. I’m not sure if I was born with that passion or if it developed over time with encouragement from adults in my life. Writing was never presented to me as a chore; instead, it was suggested or assigned as a fun project.

I grew up in an age of imagination. As children, our activities were unstructured and we spent a great deal of time in the world of make believe. We created our own fantasy worlds in which we pretended all day long. Parents and teachers did not rescue us from any boredom that we may have experienced. We were just left to figure it out for ourselves and often did so, reverting to our worlds of make believe. As an adult, I now realize that was a gift.

My parents did not overtly encourage my writing, but they made sure that plenty of paper and pencils were readily available. Writing paraphernalia could be found all over the house. Putting pen to paper was not considered something that happened in a set location, but could occur anywhere. For a birthday present one year, I was given a leather-bound diary, complete with lock and key. This was a very special present—a place where I could record my most secret thoughts. When we went away on vacations, my mother would remind me that my grandmother enjoyed receiving my letters. Mom made this activity fun by making sure that I always had an ample supply of stationery of my own choosing. If postcards were to be sent, I was allowed to pick those out as well. The decorations on the stationery and the pictures on the cards often suggested subjects about which I might tell my grandmother.

In school, we were encouraged to write stories. I have no recollection of how these were evaluated, but I don’t remember getting any assignments back with lots of marks. Many times, we were given one-sentence story starters. It was fun to see how fellow students would take those single sentences in so many different directions.

My favorite writing project took place in junior high. Miss Johnson was my English teacher. She was very tall and her toes pointed out at angles giving her a bit of a duck walk. She had a strong, mellow voice, never smiled, and was very strict, but always fair. Miss Johnson made diagramming sentences fun, and in late October, just before Halloween, she would read us Edgar Allan Poe stories. One day Miss Johnson posted Norman Rockwell pictures from The Saturday Evening Post all around the room. For those of you too young to remember, the cover of each issue of the magazine featured a Norman Rockwell illustration that told a story about every day life. The pictures elicited all kinds of questions about what happened before and after the related incident. We students were allowed to choose any picture we wanted and write a story about it.

I was also pleased (elementary school through graduate school) each time I was assigned a research project. I have always enjoyed discovering new information, learning about various resources, and organizing my learning in new ways.

In elementary school, I became interested in pen pals. It was fun to find out about different cultures and to correspond with boys and girls from foreign lands. Many of these were children learning English as a second or third or fourth language. I collected pen pals in a variety of ways. My aunt was in contact with some of our relatives in Norway and gave me the addresses of two shirttail cousins from the old country. There were also some organizations that connected student pen pals in different lands. By the time I was in high school, I had almost 20 pen pals. I could hardly wait to get home each day to see what mail had arrived. Writing to all these people also piqued my interested in stamp collecting, as the letters I received were often filled with colorful, exotic squares, rectangles, and sometimes triangles from abroad. Mr. Salisbury, an elderly friend who took me under his wing, continued corresponding with pen pals and stamp collecting for his entire life. (He sent me his duplicate stamps for my collection.) I was fascinated because, as an adult, he traveled the world and visited all of the people he had written since childhood.

So, I’m not sure if the love of writing is inherent or taught. I do know that there are many ways that adults can encourage writing by providing the tools and opportunities and also presenting it as a fun activity. My experiences growing up list just a few of these.

Writing in Public Places

I usually need to be alone, in a quiet place when working on a writing project; however, there are times when it is best for me to work in public places.

Example: I just returned from a two week vacation to the East Coast. While the primary objectives of the trip were to enjoy a different part of the country, spend time with friends, and relax, it was also a rich opportunity to gather information for future writing projects while in public places. Teachers of writing might encourage their students to make use of such opportunities. One does not need to go on vacation. Writing ideas may be collected in a classroom, at a shopping mall, in a restaurant or park, at a family dinner, etc. Personal writing assignments while in public places could include the following:

Characters—Through observation, build descriptions of physical characteristics and mannerisms of individuals. What are the jobs or interests of your characters? Who are their friends and family members? If you don’t know, can you imagine them?

Interactions between individuals or groups—Occasionally I find myself in an unpleasant situation or I am forced to watch an unpleasant interaction between others. Rather that let this upset me, I turn an imaginary switch in my mind and say to myself, “This is fodder for my novel.” One can use such experiences to take mental notes about body language, emotions expressed and felt, effects on others, etc. Once in a private place, the budding writer can record his observations.

Settings—Detailing a specific setting may provide future information for one’s writing, especially if attention is paid to all the senses.

It helps to have some type of organizational system to collect one’s thoughts. Possible systems might include a series of simple file folders, a notebook with dividers, or folders on a computer word processing program. I have a combination of several systems and have still not discovered the one that I think works best, but I keep trying. I do collect my ideas and descriptions and file them, often having no specific project in mind where I will use them. They are there for me to draw upon in the future when I need inspiration. They definitely stave off any problems with writer’s block.