Introducing Mini Memoir Courses
Dear all
This week, with only one 5-week block of The Writer’s Notebook workshops to go before I take a break for the summer to work on my Moonpause project, I’ve been imagining and setting up workshops for the autumn.
I will be carrying on with The Writer’s Notebook and monthly Journalling Group at Chequer Mead Theatre in Sussex. But I wanted something slightly different for Zoom, something more focussed and easier to explain!
So I’ve come up with 3-week long Mini Memoir courses. These will be on different aspects of memoir or autobiographical writing or any other writing inspired by life. Many memoir writing techniques overlap with fiction writing or poetry but also there are particular issues that come up when writing from life, such as who might read the story, how to create a vivid scene when you only have a fragment of memory, whether to use fragments instead and how to write about people that are still living. We will discuss these issues as they come up but I will focus on practical, creative exercises and the usual mix of writing and sharing. During the final week of three, I will allow time for sharing work written at home, exploring techniques learned on the course.
I will offer the Mini Memoir courses on Zoom (Tuesday afternoons) and at Chequer Mead (Tuesday evenings).
The first ones will be:
Bringing Characters Alive - Zoom (12, 19 & 26 Sept) or Chequer Mead (19, 26 Sept & 3 Oct)
Story Worlds - Zoom (31 Oct, 7 & 14 Nov) or Chequer Mead (17 & 31 Oct, 7 Nov).
I’d love to carry on with The Friday Retreat as well, but will see how the summer dates go. I still have spaces for 9 June and 14 July.
With all of that setting up, I am a little behind with my writing plans for this week, but I am ready to move on to my next Moonpause essay after finally finishing and submitting my silver birch essay last week! I will give a fuller update of this work soon with the next Arts Council funded issue of Awen.
Writing Prompt
This is based on my first exercise at The Writer’s Notebook workshop this morning…
Pick a travel guide from your shelf. Or other non-fiction book.
Pick a page at random.
Use words and phrases found on that page to create a poem.
I had fun doing this with a walking guide to Offa’s Dyke in which I found the phrase: ‘An irregular choice in Chepstow…’. I want to go back to this to see where it leads me in freewriting!
And from an old guide to India:
a new experience is very reasonable with facts at your fingertips the bottom of the ladder is generally hard to get into standards are variable meals are provided but not always bedding everywhere you go roving officials are constructed and managed specially for tourists
That’s all for now!
Until next time…
Mel
This newsletter was created by Mel Parks, a writer, researcher and workshop facilitator based in Sussex, UK. Mel runs writing workshops locally and on Zoom and researches creativity in midlife as well as her personal connection to nature. She has been widely published and is currently working on a series of moon and plant-inspired essays.