What I'll Be Teaching in My Memoir Workshop This Weekend

This Saturday, I'll be teaching my Memoir Writing workshop at City University in London.

When I was designing the workshop, I found myself thinking carefully about what could actually be useful to do together over the space of a day. Spoiler alert: you're not going to finish your memoir in one sitting.

Instead, both in my own writing and in my work with hundreds of writers, I've noticed that there are three things that almost always support writers to find both the inspiration and momentum they need.

Reading the work of other writers

Whenever I'm stuck, one of the first things I do is return to books I love.

Reading memoir reminds us what is possible with the form. It shows us that there isn't one correct way to tell a life story. Some memoirs are chronological. Others move backwards and forwards through time. Some are built around a place, a relationship, a question, or even a single event.

Reading widely gives us permission. Again and again, I've watched writers discover new possibilities for their own work simply by encountering the work of someone else.

Getting words onto the page

The second thing that helps is deceptively simple: writing.

Most memoir projects feel worst when they exist solely inside our heads. A memoir can feel impossibly complicated when we're trying to hold the entire thing in our minds at once. Yet the moment we sit down and write a single scene, a memory, or even a fragment of dialogue, something shifts.

The project becomes real.

This is one of the reasons I build significant writing time into all of my workshops. Writing doesn't only happen because we feel inspired. Very often, inspiration arrives because we've started.

Learning the craft

One of the most common misconceptions about memoir is that it is simply a matter of writing down what happened. If only it were that easy.

Memoir is an art form. It asks us not only to remember events, but to shape them into a meaningful experience for the reader. Many memoirists struggle because they're trying to solve craft problems without realising that's what they are. They worry that the writing feels flat, when the issue might be a lack of scene. They wonder why readers aren't engaged, when perhaps there isn't enough reflection. They become overwhelmed by difficult material because they haven't yet found the right distance from it.

A little understanding of craft can make an enormous difference. As one participant said to me last month, "You create an environment that incorporates both rigour and ease." I was deeply touched by that feedback because it captures exactly what I hope to offer.

If you're interested in joining a future memoir workshop with me, you can find details of upcoming dates on City University’s page here:

https://www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-students/courses/short-courses/writing-the-memoir