What We're Doing in Class: "I Am Not a Real Writer"

"I Am Not a Real Writer" is for people who've wanted to take a writing class but have been concerned about knowing how to do it "right."

Unsurprisingly (to me) everyone in this class is writing wonderful stuff. They are all 100% real.

They're leaning towards memoir, and we've been exploring this prompt. It involves being assigned a random phrase and using it as a jumping-off point for a memory. The phrase/image doesn't actually have to be part of your memory, as long as it brings it to mind. For example, one person got the phrase "half a cake" which brought up a memory of someone who temporarily disappeared-- even though there was no actual cake present at the time. Try it!

We're also reading some short memoirs, which I'll post over the coming days. I usually teach fiction, so it's a pleasure to explore this form.

Here's one for today: "One Day I Will Write About My Mother" by Marlon James. This shows how the difficulty in writing about a particular subject can become part of the piece itself-- one of the things it's about.

Mikhail Vrubel, Pencils, 1905