I've been thinking of offering a writing workshop for older adults. My peer group now. It occurred to me that many of the prompts I used over a 35 year teaching career would work well with mature writers. I think that's because aside from stimulating the memory and offering some critical thinking opportunities, writing helps one save their life...literally and figuratively. There are other simple benefits too. Even writing by hand helps maintain fine motor skills and of course, writing helps people process their thoughts. In the words if one if my favorite quotes, "How will I know what I think until I see what I say." Just substitute write for say and there you have it. I don't think E.M. Forester would mind.
I'd decided to start with a simple writing strategy I'll call a childhood table of contents. If you look at the table of contents of many books, the chapter titles are often fascinating...a world in themselves. In my classroom, we used the Table of Contents from the popular Sandra Cisneros book, The House on Mango Street. Most of these titles are so intriguing that you know there is an interesting story there at once.
Take a look at this portion of the Table from the Cisneros book. Which ones jump out at you so that you are dying to know more?
For me, it's titles like Hair, and Those Who Don't that make me want to know more. They just sound intriguing.
So, the next step is to think about your own childhood events and experiences and what a table of contents for that might look like. My own personal Table contains the titles, Do You Want To Practice Kissing, When He Robs Them, and Becks. Anything peak your curiosity.
If that exercise is successful and my little group of reluctant writers want more, I'll follow that up with some descriptive writing activities to build some skills in writing fresh similes and metaphors, and possibly take a look at some models of various genres. Trying to emulate some of the styles and skills of our favorite writers is always worthwhile. Aside from building more skills, it serves to remind us how skilled there writers are and hopefully we retain fresh appreciation for them.
The longer we live, the more our memory plays tricks on us. I'm sure working with memory will bring many confusing or contradictory experiences to the surface. That's OK. Writers of memoir don't have to be exact. We are not trying to recall every exact detail from something 50 or 60 years ago. We are retelling and recreating the emotions felt.
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