Last night we finished the fifth of our five sessions of Memoir 1 at the Writers' Barn in Shelburne, VT. Seven writers unpacking their memories, finding scenes, characters, delight, sorrow, joy, laughing out loud moments in their lives that they want to share with others.
Our classes are experiential, we write/I teach and we are amazed how scenes emerge from the exercises we do. Scenes hidden in our unconscious, filed away under "do not disturb" or "don't go there." As time goes on we learn the craft of writing, what works and more wonderful writing emerges.
It is in those tender, sometimes difficult moments, when our true voice is heard. Sure, we want to tell others about our achievements, but it is in those tiny moments we write about that our readers resonate with our writing. They are, what I call, universal moments.
Universal moments when everyone around the globe can identify with a writer's feeling expressed in a scene: the car door closing as a 12 year old child is left at a boarding school, a day in a garden then everything changes, someone uprooted from their homeland, the shock of winning something you thought was unreachable (no matter how small), war changing everything, a house holding its family close over 40 years, children of survivors who endured unimaginable terror and so much more.
As humans united through our stories, we need to hear these stories. We need to be there in scene with the writer on that boat, in that building, in that family. It is the writer's original voice we yearn to hear. Those stories not only unite us as part of this global experience, it gives us hope we can go on, while validating our own experience as part of our cultural story.
Our classes are experiential, we write/I teach and we are amazed how scenes emerge from the exercises we do. Scenes hidden in our unconscious, filed away under "do not disturb" or "don't go there." As time goes on we learn the craft of writing, what works and more wonderful writing emerges.
It is in those tender, sometimes difficult moments, when our true voice is heard. Sure, we want to tell others about our achievements, but it is in those tiny moments we write about that our readers resonate with our writing. They are, what I call, universal moments.
Universal moments when everyone around the globe can identify with a writer's feeling expressed in a scene: the car door closing as a 12 year old child is left at a boarding school, a day in a garden then everything changes, someone uprooted from their homeland, the shock of winning something you thought was unreachable (no matter how small), war changing everything, a house holding its family close over 40 years, children of survivors who endured unimaginable terror and so much more.
As humans united through our stories, we need to hear these stories. We need to be there in scene with the writer on that boat, in that building, in that family. It is the writer's original voice we yearn to hear. Those stories not only unite us as part of this global experience, it gives us hope we can go on, while validating our own experience as part of our cultural story.
RSS Feed