Wore Myself Out Teaching a Class on Creating Memoirs
This afternoon I taught a class on how to write memoirs. This was in a building in the local university, so I was in person with the students. They were all women and most of them were -- like myself -- of a certain age.
At first I explained that there are two main target audiences: either the general public or family and friends. For either approach, there is also the undexpected bonus of what you the writer will learn about yourself and your life.
Then I went through the various formats, from simple homemade notebooks to self-published or tradtionally published. I had three of my self-published paperback memoirs along with me, which I had created in Scrivener and formatted in the Mac-only program Vellum. I also had several other books along, including a book my husband had created in InDesign and one he had done using Shutterfly. I passed those around and talked quite a lot about formats and software.
I asked the students to introduce themselves in terms of what writing they had done, but mostly they got sidetracked onto things like where they were borm or how long they had lived here.
Then I told them to write for twenty minutes, and they did. That led to some sharing and also to questions about how to stay on a topic.
We will meet again next week. I gave them some writing homework.
I used to teach a lot of writing classes, but it's been many years. Man, I was worn out after not quite two hours!
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That still sounds very exciting, Rosana! Heck you could even write a book about your "Teaching Writing Experiences" as well. The sky is the limit!
Well done, and the more you continue to get back into that, the more the tiredness will fall away as you will be in your element!
Well done!
Jeff
Lovely skill, Rosanna
If this is going to be frequent, you will eventually adapt to the teaching hours.
Great job you've done
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Oh, yes, things we could once do and consider a breeze suddenly become tiring and draining.
Writing a memoir is a big topic. In our writer's group, books on memoir-writing have made the rounds. It's not all that easy, and there's a lot to learn. I'm sure, though, that your students found great benefit from your class.
Makes you appreciate youth, doesn't it? I've found myself doing quite a bit of that kind of appreciation lately.