Memoir-Writing Class Opportunity

Two-Week Window to Register for Karen Mains’ Memoir-Writing Teleconference Class!

Years ago, it became clear to me that writing classes were dangerous for me! Nothing choked my creative capabilities any quicker than attending a seminar with a title like “How to Become a Better Writer.”

I realized that these sessions, taught by writing gurus, did a great job of presenting their well-established teaching routines, many of which they had taught in workshops or plenary addresses in conferences all across the country.

What I really needed, I decided when my expressive juices turned toxic after attending a few of these professional gatherings, was someone who would help me discover and feel free to express my unique writer’s voice.

The same thing can happen to me when I read books on becoming a best-selling author (can anyone really guarantee this?). The production wheels inside my creative soul often grind to a stop, jammed as I attempt to consider how to manipulate my peculiar writing style into someone else’s successful formula.

Recently, while reading a book on How to Be a More Successful Writer, I could feel my inner scrivener starting to choke. However, I knew the author of this particular work personally, and realized that all his commendations about discarding half of what you’ve written as a general rule to self-editing and of using the simplest word choices, was something that applied to his own particular voice more than it did to mine. His recommendations as to how to improve his reader’s writing style fit him better, perhaps, because they had been successful for him. Many books published. The eventual CEO of a well-know publishing house. Finally, an executive position in a large foundation that granted substantial funds to deserving grantees.

What I really needed to find were coaches who did not so much advocate for grammatical correctness or minimalist styles, but who could help a writer wanting to discover the beauty of his/her own voice. Someone who could free the creative inner self to keep the quirkiness and guard against destroying the passion; someone cautious about quashing my individual expression that made a writer unique.

And I have found those wise souls within the apparatus of publishing. Some of these rare folk are content editors, who generously scoured my manuscripts, going page-by-page over the red editing marks and insisting I enter the ego-depleting door marked REWRITE! And believe me, my submitted manuscripts are always filled with editors’ red marks, with many comments written in the columns and with worrisome post-it notes indicating where rewriting attention needs to be applied.

Nevertheless, I am of the school that insists: Fine writing is a matter of re-writing, letting the work cool for a little while, then re-writing and re-writing again. But I also want to keep the distinctives that make me the writer that I am and am still becoming.

This dilemma of copycat writers turning out formulaic copy is best solved by finding a writing group with differing opinions, a generous and honest reader/commentator, or just a good friend—all of whom will give you their honest opinions as to what you do well and where you need to improve.

This is one of the reasons I fit in memoir coaching every few years. The voice we use to tell a hilarious story out of our past or out of the recent days of our lives is often close to the one we want to express when we’re writing out those incidents in our memoirs. The laughter we capture from others who hear our tale, or the honest anguish they express at our something-gone-wrong-incident, is vital. It is real—as is the voice we use, our own voice, when we verbally share with others about the things that have happened in our lives. Somehow, with this kind of real audience in mind, our telling (or our writing) stays authentic, and avoids the formulaic sorts of approaches imposed by many of the gurus who want to teach us how they think writing should be done.

I am of a generation, before the advent of screen-here; screen-there: screen-screen everywhere days, that spent its meals and evenings and gathering times laughing or commiserating with the storytellers in its midst. And as a child, now an adult looking back, it seems to me that everyone born decades before my own told captivating tales.

Consequently, I am offering two telementoring classes that will meet twice a month from February to June. One class will meet every other Tuesday at 9 a.m. (Central Time), and the other class will meet every other Thursday at 7 p.m. The classes run from February 4 through June 9. The cost to register is $500.

If you are concerned about keeping your unique voice or finding it, more information is available at https://wwwlifelaunchme.com/memoirs. Click this link to for a fuller description of the course and to register.

Six people have signed up so far, we can fit another 4-6 folk into the two groups. If you are wanting to be a part of this unique opportunity, wisdom might advise you to act quickly. Our goal is to help you discover and protect your unique voice.


Karen Mains

Reminder!

The Soulish Food e-mails are being posted biweekly on the Hungry Souls Web site. Newcomers can look that over and decide if they want to register on the Web site to receive the biweekly newsletter. You might want to recommend this to friends also. They can go to www.HungrySouls.org.

Hungry Souls Contact Information

ADDRESS: 29W377 Hawthorne Lane
West Chicago, IL 60185
PHONE: 630-293-4500
EMAIL: karen@hungrysouls.org

Karen Mains

BOOK CORNER

How to Read a Book
by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren

Good writers are ALWAYS good readers. This classic: How to Read a Book: The bestselling guide to reading books and accessing information by Mortimer Adler and Chares Van Doren is a must for wannabe writers (or thinkers or folk who keep self-educating).

How to Read a Book (according to the back-cover copy) is the “best and most successful guide to reading comprehension written for the general reader. ... The book contains essential tips on how to read: History, Science, Mathematics, Philosophy, Fiction Drama, Poetry, Biography, Current Events, Manuals, Social Science and Scripture."

This obviously is a comprehensive guide; its initial best-selling edition in 1940 became an indispensible tool for the dedicated reader. 

This is a book I like to take off the shelf. The chapter “Coming to Terms With An Author” might give some developing writers insight into what it is they are doing when they are writing (or what it is they should be doing) through the eyes of that crucial demographic—the mind and thoughts of the all-important reader.

WARNING: The writing is a little dense, written as it was in the 1940s, but for the serious learner, it is a intriguing twist in time, and diligence in attending to its message brings rewards.

A more-accessible book for the modern reader is On Writers & Writing by John Gardner, who has in many ways, through his works, been a mentor to me. This is an introduction to contemporary writers, well-know and some lesser-known, with Gardner’s frank opinion of them, both good and bad! Makes you want to read all those authors he examines. Most worthwhile is his critique of literature. The mashup in my own Tales of the Kingdom Trilogy between fairy tale, fable and allegory is a direct response to Gardner’s observations that genre-crossing often creates great and lasting literature.