Memoir-writing course: mentoring small groups to realise their creative potential
I am excited to offer a 6-week memoir-writing course in small groups via video link from Tuscany. If you have ever wanted to write your story, I can help you to turn your experiences into a compelling memoir. Over the weeks, I will mentor small groups personally through interactive classes, helping to release creativity and shape a personal narrative that brings your life experiences to the world. Weekly two-hour sessions will incorporate relaxation practices to help us find our inspiration, tutoring in a small group, personal mentoring for your story, and on-going feedback to help shape your narrative.
Classes will take place via the Zoom conference calling app, in a group of maximum five people to ensure plenty of personal attention and the possibility of building a strong cooperative relationship with fellow students through sharing and critiquing each other’s work. We will be ‘in the room’ together so we can interact rather than solo study to a video or course manual.
I offer the same course in two separate classes at different ends of the day to include people in different time zones. Courses are ongoing, please contact me for the next starting date. I have dramatically reduced the course fee to £200 ($270/€220) total to make it accessible in these challenging times. Please contact me to enrol.
Mentoring budding memoir-writers: course outline
Everyone has a story to tell but how do you actually go about turning that into a book? How do you judge if your story will speak to a general readership? How do you decide what part of your life to write about? And when you have selected either a shorter time frame or a longer span of many years, how do you know who should be included in your book? We will address all these important questions first of all on our journey through this writing course.
In writing a memoir, you never just tell your own story – how do you deal with the delicate question of telling other people’s stories, asking for permission, letting others read your manuscript, changing identifying details, legal considerations and how can you overcome personal misgivings to find your voice.
This course will also help you to navigate how to boil down factual research into a palatable and engaging narrative, and how to weave larger societal and global questions and issues into a personal story. We will cover research, factual accuracy versus ’the truth’, and how to decide and orientate your point of view and therefore narrative voice.
My approach
I believe that any creative endeavour is an encounter between our human selves and the divine. As Elizabeth Gilbert has said, creativity is ’a relationship between human beings and the mystery of inspiration’ and I believe that anybody can unlock, build and strengthen this relationship. My approach draws on my experience as a writer, but also as a yoga teacher, Reiki healer and bodyworker, using these tools to bring us into a relaxed state in which we can enter ‘the flow’, combining this with practical writing exercises to develop consistency so we can tether our inspiration to the discipline required to see a long-form piece of work through all its different stages of writing, editing and redrafting until it is ready to go out into the world.
Watch the video of a memoir writing workshop I taught
To watch a memoir and diary-writing workshop I taught online at the beginning of the lockdown in Italy (specifically to help people navigate this extraordinary time), please click here.