Unlock Your Creative Power With Childhood Memoir

Learn how to write your first collection of childhood memoir stories

What you'll learn

Understand the key writing technique the top memoirists use

Identify examples of high quality memoir writing and why they're so good

Identify the potential strengths in your own writing with the class project

Understand how to edit your stories efficiently

Become clear on how to make your story collection more cohesive

Know how to stay motivated with your writing, for this project and in the long term

Requirements

No writing experience needed

Description

In this course, Ruth shares the 4-step approach she used to write her first collection of childhood memoir stories. Learning a key technique that the top memoirists use was one of the most important parts of this approach, so that's where we're going to start. We'll look at examples of high quality writing from James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", Hilary Mantel's memoir "Giving Up the Ghost"  and Virginia Woolf's memoir "Moments of Being". We'll also take a look at some beautiful examples from poetry with Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry Picking",  W.B. Yeats's "The Stolen Child" and Emily Dickinson's "A Child's faith is new". Then we'll go through the editing technique Ruth found worked best for her published collection, and then we'll talk about how to bring all your stories together when they're done. Lastly, Ruth will guide you through her top tips on staying motivated in the beginning and right the way through this project, as well as tips on staying motivated to write in the long term.For the class project, you are invited to share your favourite quote from the writing examples we look at and why it is your favourite in 2-3 sentences, on our Q&A forum.Look forward to hearing from you in the Q&A forum!

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction

Section 2: Building Your Collection: From Start to Finish

Lecture 2 How Do the Top Memoirists Do It?

Lecture 3 What can we learn from poets like Seamus Heaney?

Lecture 4 How Do We Edit Our Stories Efficiently?

Lecture 5 How Can We Bring All Our Stories Together?

Section 3: Conclusion & 10 Top Tips on Staying Motivated

Lecture 6 10 Top Tips on Staying Motivated

Lecture 7 Conclusion

Section 4: Bonus Advice: 4 Tips on Staying Motivated in the Long Term

Lecture 8 4 Tips on Publishing & Community

Beginning and experienced writers