Workshop: Creative Nonfiction
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Personal Essay as a Path to Memoir
Every life contains valuable stories, but how do we tell them? Whether you have written extensively about your personal history or you are new to the project of memoir, you will benefit from lifting particular scenes out of your life for focused attention. Writing prompts will encourage exploration into childhood memory, sensory detail, playing with voice, digging deeper into emotional hot-spots, and seeking the “hook” or universal themes in your story.
Writing memoir is often daunting, so the premise of this course is that a memoir is an assembly of parts. Whether your final project becomes a continuous arc or a collection of essays, working scene by scene can help you break through the wall of resistance one step at a time.
In addition to generating new material, our work will include the following:
How personal is too personal? Since it is a perpetual ethical dilemma, we will spend some time on questions of truth-telling, privacy, and whose stories we are “allowed” to tell.
The course is largely generative, but we will also spend time on the revision process with at least one piece of your writing. My goal is to see every student leave the class with at least one work well on the way to submission-ready.
In workshopping sessions, students will be asked to read their work aloud. Feedback/discussion will NOT highlight criticism, but emphasize positive responses and questions for reflection.
No writer improves their practice without reading other writers, so I will also leave you with a suggested list of memoirs and essay collections to explore on your own.
Note: This course is for anyone who is serious about wanting to write and potentially publish work about their life experiences. Ideally, you have read at least three full length memoirs or books of personal essay to bring to the discussion table. You will also be asked to submit a 3-5 page writing sample after registering for the course.
Submit:
• A 3-5 page writing sample ( (double-spaced, Times New Roman 12-point font)
• Two-three paragraphs describing your big picture writing goals and your goals for this course.
• Please include both items in one document, and be sure to include your name.
Please send your submission by February 23 at 9 AM to director@mainewriters.org with the subject line “Snowbound Nonfiction MSS”.
Robin Clifford Wood is the author of the award-winning biography-memoir hybrid, The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine. In addition to publishing poetry and non-fiction in several trade and literary magazines, she spent five years as a regular columnsist for the Bangor Daily News, writing stories about the people of Maine. Wood spent another five years as a writing professor at Husson University, and has also taught writing at the graduate level and for senior college. She has degrees from Yale (BA), Univ. of Rochester (MA in English), and Univ. of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program (MFA in creative writing). Wood and her husband of almost 40 years live in central Maine where they enjoy the comings and goings of their four children, in-laws, granddogs, and grandchildren.