Four session workshop

 
DESCRIPTION: This workshop teaches you to start, organize, and improve your memoir or any life-writing project. If you have already started, these workshops will help you go deeper. Workshop leader Jerry Waxler will teach you the techniques that let you find the material and shape them into an engaging story. And we’ll answer questions and overcome obstacles so you can achieve your goals.

Through handouts, in-class writing, discussion, home assignments, and an online group we’ll cover techniques, and offer support and guidance that will keep you moving forward. Here are some of the topics we’ll address:

• How to pull vignettes out of the pile of memories.
• The crucial role of free-writing in finding the story.
• Use chronology to organize your memories.
• Find structure, such as in time, character arc, and emotional theme.
• The relationship between truth and memory.
• How to cope with painful or awkward memories
• How to make written recollections lively, lifelike, and readable.

 
INSTRUCTOR: Jerry Waxler, M.S is a therapist, speaker, and Life-Writing Coach who specializes in the issues facing writers. He is the author of "Learn to Write your Memoir in Four Weeks," and “Four Elements for Writers, how to get beyond “yes-but,” conquer self-doubt and inertia, and achieve your writing goals.” Jerry writes columns for the Bucks County Herald and other publications and has been a teacher at area writer's groups. He is on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Writers Conference.