| p>In leading memoir writing workshops, the | | | | not to "be nice." A teacher's job is to do all s/he |
| teacher's task is to help individuals to go through | | | | can to help people to record honest, meaningful, |
| and beyond two kinds of barriers to their writing: | | | | and interesting personal and family stories. |
| the technical and the psychological blocks that | | | | To do that job, the memoir teacher must focus |
| keep them from success. Our job is to facilitate | | | | workshops on the present and purposely give |
| our participants' arrival at a point where they are | | | | stories back to those who lived them. This is not |
| able to "own" their stories, to acknowledge their | | | | easy; there seems to be an impulse (in every one |
| life stories as they are and to accept themselves | | | | of us!) to write a smaller, easier version, to let the |
| as they are. | | | | writer stay comfortable and unchallenged. In fact, |
| A technical barrier to grasping the meaning of the | | | | it is my experience that most lifewriters are at |
| work might be a writer's lack of familiarity with | | | | first content to write smaller stories than the |
| using varied or complex sentence structure. A | | | | ones they lived. Recently, when I pointed out that |
| psychological barrier would be a a writer's | | | | there were discrepancies in the emotional tone of |
| reluctance to search out and tell the truth of the | | | | a workshopper's story, she replied quite easily, |
| story, or to identify and sustain the persona in | | | | "Well, no, it didn't happen that way. I put that |
| which s/he writes. | | | | ending in because it made it easier to wrap up the |
| It is not easy to deal with these hard issues, to | | | | story." |
| take hold of the moment in the workshop when | | | | It is the teacher's task to challenge the impulse to |
| these points present themselves and to insist that | | | | do less, to be less of a writer. It's the leader's job |
| the author and the group deal with them. | | | | to see to it that writers don't "get away with" |
| But I am always struck by how grateful | | | | writing the smaller, shorter, easier, TV-movie |
| workshoppers are when we hold them to high | | | | version of their life stories. Rewriting, inevitably, is |
| standards. | | | | what allows the story to become larger and |
| People will say, "I never knew writing was so | | | | deeper, to assume its real size and shape. When |
| hard" or, "So this is what writers do. I always | | | | we fail to urge our participants towards the fully |
| wondered what the big deal was--I guess it's | | | | examined, fully expressed meaning of their |
| harder than I thought." Sometimes it's an "aha!" | | | | stories, we are settling for being less fully realized |
| moment of recognition; other times, the | | | | as teachers and writers ourselves. |
| awareness comes quite slowly as writers leave | | | | When a teacher holds out for the larger, often |
| the workshop session and return to the story | | | | more complex and difficult story, writers seem--if |
| that challenged them. | | | | sometimes only later--to appreciate the effort. |
| The moment of gratitude is often later--after | | | | This is true leadership in a workshop, for it is only |
| considerable struggle in which the teacher has | | | | the instructor who can and should affirm his/her |
| refused every opportunity to overlook difficulties | | | | authority by saying, "You can do more. Let's |
| and has pushed and pushed. It is reassuring to | | | | examine how." |
| experience, once again, that one's responsibility is | | | | Good luck with your teaching. |