Telling Our Stories

The objective is primarily to allow participants to discover that each one of us has stories to tell, thus to gain confidence and fluency in writing them. My previous experience in giving memoir-writing workshops, a dozen or so at the Gathering, and three at Pendle Hill, shows that this happens for each participant. In the process, people discover that they are good writers and can be even better writers.

The “topics” will be ourselves in relation to the events of our lives. I have found that by getting back into specific times, places, and the people and events that were present, we have astonishingly vivid recall. Often this recall requires developing confidence in the process. The trust that takes place in the group makes all of this possible. My method is positive reinforcement in which people learn by acknowledging the things they do in their writing that are vivid and evocative. They grow in relation to their own writing by discovering such aspects in the writing of others. A great deal of the work in this workshop is that of closely listening. We will have a separate period of worship sharing each day, though it is true that all the experiences of listening within the group (or in smaller groups broken out of the whole) are spiritual. The truth of this workshop as being spiritual becomes increasingly clear as the sessions go on. “Spiritual” will increasingly mean discovering within ourselves as in others what has had and continues to have important meaning in our lives. It means witnessing the uniqueness yet commonality of each of our lives. It means a deepening recognition that we are all a part of one another.

The specific format will be: Worship Sharing (20 minutes more or less); writing time (60 minutes or more); reading to each other and giving feedback (60 minutes or more, depending on the writing time); one break for approximately 10 minutes. At various points, the schedule will be modified by discussion of sections of Patricia Hampl, I COULD TELL YOU STORIES, which each participant should bring to the workshop. The Hampl book should be made available in the Bookstore; also it could be acquired ahead of time.