tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239140084937897595.post5258651212280130086..comments2023-10-19T10:26:30.108-04:00Comments on Yin and Yang: Writing WorkshopUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239140084937897595.post-13620293977064881882007-03-05T15:01:00.000-05:002007-03-05T15:01:00.000-05:00I wish I'd had a course like this to take when I w...I wish I'd had a course like this to take when I was writing my memoir! It sounds very helpful, esp relating it to the world at large, though I confess that the outside world played almost no role in my life during the years of which I wrote, largely because I was unable to pay attention to it. But the outside world was changing and the changes did affect me, as services changed and thinking changed and even diagnoses changed. In fact, I wish I'd - we'd - had more help and guidance in writing our memoir altogether! As we did, we were writing it in the dark, in almost every figurative sense of the word.<BR/><BR/>One thing to know is that there is a huge difference between writing an autobiography or one's memoirs, and A memoir. THe first is an all-encompassing account of one's life from birth to whatever age you are now that may reveal several themes that intertwine. The second deliberately chooses a focus, a theme or subject -- ours was quite specifically twins-and-schizophrenia and everything we chose out of all our writings had to have something to do with that -- and continues with an eye to that specific focus. You needn't be too rigid, I suppose, but we were, and were told to be in order to hold the book together, which I think turned out to be the one piece of good advice we were given. We were given almost no other advice! (Our agent edited us as the editor sat back, lied to her about editing us, and did literally, really literally, nothing.<BR/><BR/>Sorry to go on and on. Obviously you are not ready to write a book, but I was once where you are now (and I was then just your age too!) and I needed advice and information that no one gave me. So I want to help you where no one helped me...The other piece of advice I can give to aid in autobiographical writing, the single best advice, which I discovered on my own, is to read the autobiographical or memoir form. There are hundreds of them out there and I could suggest many. But they are the best teachers in terms of how to write memoir and also, when they are good, how to write well.<BR/><BR/>Yours, deep in the writing well <BR/><BR/>PamAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239140084937897595.post-81825897936035603422007-03-04T23:22:00.000-05:002007-03-04T23:22:00.000-05:00Your description of Ms Underhill’s class makes me ...Your description of Ms Underhill’s class makes me want to sign up for a writing class. Please keep us posted on what you are learning and if the class keeps your interest.<BR/><BR/>Yaya-IngAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com