This Intensive is Now Sold Out. If you’d like to be placed on the Waiting List and/or informed of other workshops with Laurie in the future, contact us at: scuppernongeditions@gmail.com
Five 3-hour Sessions in June 2022. $250 June 1-29 Online Class size limited to 10.
This workshop on writing memoir has good news and bad news. The good news is you can use things that have happened in your life as prompts for writing that will engage other readers. The news that may come as a disappointment is that the reader will not care about the things you relay because they have, in reality, happened or because they happened to you. A story worth telling is not about what happened. It’s about what the narrator makes of what happened. This workshop invites writers interested in the craft and form of writing sentences that seduce readers into continuing to read.
We will practice working in two time frames to build a narrative. The narrator will tell the reader about an incident. My dog died in my arms. I was pushing my cart through the supermarket when I saw a person I had sex with and still think about. After that statement, the narrator will tell the reader about the associations they had in the moment of the dog dying or seeing the former lover, the emotions or associations that were felt in that moment in the past–whether it is five minutes ago or fifty years ago. And then the narrator will also tell the reader about the thoughts and associations they are having now, in the process of recalling this moment in the past. Maybe a memory is stirred. Maybe there is the recognition of pleasure in loss or excitement in spying on someone who doesn’t see you.
This process of writing does not involve memory. It involves active creativity in the moment of writing. The things your narrator will think about in the process of thinking on the page will not be a record of what actually happened. They will be things you make up in front of the computer or writing in your notebook. This layering of time frames is what creates narrative and allows the reader to enter your thoughts as if the story is about the reader. Using this method, the reader will always know why you are telling them something. It’s importance to the narrator will be clear.
We will work with a few other elements of craft and form. You will try to write short pieces according to this little guide: start in the middle, fail to arrive, remember to love something, make the reader hot, make the reader laugh. In addition, you will practice telling stories without heroes or victims. Your contemplation will rest with delight on contradiction that cannot be resolved.
One scholarship is available for this course. If you’d like to apply, send 400 words of your best writing to: scuppernongeditions@gmail.com. Scholarship will be awarded May 20.
Laurie Stone is author of six books books including recently Streaming Now, Postcards from the Thing that is Happening (Dottir Press, 2022), Everything is Personal, Notes on Now (Scuppernong Editions, 2020), and My Life as an Animal, Stories (Northwestern University Press/Triquarterly Press, 2016). She was a longtime writer for the Village Voice, theater critic for The Nation, and critic-at-large on Fresh Air. She won the Nona Balakian prize in excellence in criticism from the National Book Critics Circle and two grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has published numerous stories in such publications as n + 1, Waxwing, Tin House, Evergreen Review, Electric Lit, Fence, Open City, Anderbo, The Collagist, Your impossible Voice, New Letters, TriQuarterly, Threepenny Review, and Creative Nonfiction. In 2005, she participated in “Novel: An Installation,” writing a book and living in a house designed by architects Salazar/Davis in the Flux Factory’s gallery space. She has frequently collaborated with composer Gordon Beeferman in text/music works. The world premiere of their piece “You, the Weather, a Wolf” was presented in the 2016 season of the St. Urban concerts. Her next book will be The Love of Strangers, a collection of linked stories. Her website is: lauriestonewriter.com.
