Sue Roupp.Teach.Write.Speak. Memoir Writing in 6 Easy Steps. Teacher. Workshops. TV host. editor.
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MEMOIR WRITING

10/19/2012

 
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.


One Word At A Time

6/28/2011

 
Most writers are like deer in the headlights of a car when they sit down to write something.  Even the phrase "sit down to write something" can strike terror into one's mind.  Frozen, we sit looking at our computer or our page, and  we are terrified to begin.

The river of our unconscious mind  turns into rapids. What if it's no good.  What if it isn't in sequence.  What if the characters, setting, theme are too bland, not developed enough. Who am I to think I can do this?  

There is an antidote to all this who-ha negative thinking: write one word.  Just one.  Write it on your calendar, write it on your to-do list, write it on a post-it note and put it up on the refrigerator door.  It doesn't matter where you put it - what matters is that you write it.

I recommend writing one word on your calendar each day of the week.  Just one word.  Pretty soon you have a writing prompt data base from which you 
can draw a game changing word.  

When you are frozen in space, borrow a word from your own lending library of words and begin with that word or incorporate that word in your beginning sentence, then write as fast as you can and see what happens.  You will be delighted at the results because within us are all the words we need to tell our story, they just get to talking with each other and forget to talk with us.

So we need to nudge them out of their own conversation and invite them to join us in the daylight of our creativity.  Do it.   Suddenly there are your many word friends - each of them wanting to be on the stage of your work.  Some may want to be in the shadows, some in the spotlight, but all of them, like any ensemble, will support each other in telling the story you want to tell.

    Sue Roupp

    Teacher.Writer.Actor. Professional Speaker and more...

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