404 Nonfiction Unfettered! Liberate Your Writing Through Experimentation and Play (ENGLISH)

Anyone who’s sat down to write about the past knows it’s a little like looking at a star: look at it dead on, and it disappears, but look just a little to the left or to the right of it and there it is, bright and twinkling. Memory is a lot like this; a fickle thing that sometimes needs careful coaxing and cajoling on the part of the writer for it to reveal itself fully. In this interactive workshop, we will consider oblique angles of entry into memory through playful in-class exercises, exploration of our senses, movement, and somatic-based discovery. If Marcel Proust wrote seven volumes of a semi-autobiographical novel prompted by the taste of a madeleine cookie dipped into linden tea, just imagine what you might accomplish with the help of the scent from childhood: pine needles or fabric softener, molasses or cloves, lavender talc or your father’s cologne. Our goal is to excavate memories long buried or perhaps lingering just below the surface of consciousness, and to help those memories find a meaningful place on the page, whether as a vignette, as inspiration for a short story, as the central image in a poem, or as a fully developed memoir. And just as scent and taste might unlock the floodgates of memory for you as a writer, so too might moving your body in a new or long forgotten way. Gently and with a sense of play and adventure, we will ask our bodies to reveal memories, images, moments, and language that we will craft into meaningful writing born of our lived experiences. In this workshop, we’ll begin with an open discussion of our relationship with memory and the ‘troubles’ memory might present on the page. Then, through a brief and interactive visual presentation, we’ll encounter exemplary models of writing from practitioners for whom memory is a central feature of their work. We’ll discover the value of starting ‘without an idea’ and beginning with an image that ‘tumbles recklessly into story.’ Through short, guided exercises, we’ll focus on creating writing that is too vivid, too sensory: through jars of scent that help us ‘hit a tripwire’ of memory (as Diane Ackerman suggests), through the mindful sampling/tasting of food, through the inspiration of photographs, keepsakes and momentos, and through simple somatic exercises. Throughout the workshop we will share our work and address how we might honor our pasts and experiences, seeing writing, more broadly, as a process of researching one’s own life.

Instructor

Catherine Black