Plumbing Your Creative Depths for Effective Memoir and Beyond

If it is true, as Joan Didion once wrote, that we tell ourselves stories in order to live, then we are continuously telling ourselves stories. This intensive workshop will focus on the story you want to tell, whether it is memoir, fictional memoir or pure fiction. We will explore the following questions:

• In memoir, how might you navigate the tricky terrain of writing about people who are still alive?
• How accurate (or deceptive) are your memories, especially when it comes to events that took place years or decades ago?
• How do you turn yourself (i.e., your main character) into a reliable narrator, one the reader will come to know and trust?

This workshop helps you answer the basic question of what form you would like your story to take, and helps you mold that story into a structure with a clean arc. We will read some great writing, and we’ll do plenty of specific in-class writing exercises. This workshop is a safe five-day haven for exploring the story that resides in each of us, and finding the best way to express it via the written word.

Please bring writing tools you are most comfortable using. You will be able to share your writing with Katie in advance of the workshop.