CNF 98 W — Memoir Workshop: Bookend Your Story
Quarter: Spring
Instructor(s): Liza Monroy
Date(s): Apr 1—Jun 7
Class Recording Available: Yes
Tuition: $1000
Refund Deadline: Apr 4
Unit(s): 3
Enrollment Limit: 19
Status: Closed
Quarter: Spring
Unit(s): 3
Duration: 10 weeks
Date(s): Apr 1—Jun 7
Tuition: $1000
Refund Deadline: Apr 4
Instructor(s): Liza Monroy
Enrollment Limit: 19
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Closed
When writing a memoir, it can be tempting to endlessly revise your beginning until it’s “perfect,” with a reader-grabbing voice and clearly established stakes that convey the “about-ness” of the story without dwelling there. However, revising our memoir beginnings to perfection can become a form of procrastination that stalls progress and leaves the middle of the narrative unexplored, often because we aren’t yet sure what goes there.
In this course, you will embark on a transformative journey where you will write and workshop not only the first 2,500 words of your memoir but also the closing 2,500 words, establishing a clear endpoint on the page. This approach will serve as your guiding light, eventually empowering you to navigate the murky middle of the narrative by providing a solid sense of your story’s destination (of course revisable later on, as desired). Weekly writing assignments will be complemented by the exploration of excerpts from renowned memoirs by authors such as Joan Didion, Ann Patchett, Nick Flynn, Melissa Febos, and others, focusing particularly on their masterful beginnings and endings. You will leave the course with a refined opening and ending and a map for the chapters in between, so that you can stop tinkering with the beginning and confidently power through the whole book.
In this course, you will embark on a transformative journey where you will write and workshop not only the first 2,500 words of your memoir but also the closing 2,500 words, establishing a clear endpoint on the page. This approach will serve as your guiding light, eventually empowering you to navigate the murky middle of the narrative by providing a solid sense of your story’s destination (of course revisable later on, as desired). Weekly writing assignments will be complemented by the exploration of excerpts from renowned memoirs by authors such as Joan Didion, Ann Patchett, Nick Flynn, Melissa Febos, and others, focusing particularly on their masterful beginnings and endings. You will leave the course with a refined opening and ending and a map for the chapters in between, so that you can stop tinkering with the beginning and confidently power through the whole book.
LIZA MONROY
Author
Liza Monroy is the author of the novel Mexican High, the memoir The Marriage Act, the essay collection Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon to Be on Fire, and the forthcoming novel The Distractions. Her essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times "Modern Love" column, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, O, the Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Longreads, Newsweek, Self, and Jezebel, among others, and they have been widely anthologized. She received an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia School of the Arts and has also taught writing at Columbia and UC Santa Cruz. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty (ISBN 978-0060572150 )
(Required) Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City (ISBN 978-0393329407)
(Required) Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (ISBN 978-1400078431)
(Required) Melissa Febos, Whip Smart: The True Story of a Secret Life (ISBN 978-0312583781)
(Required) Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City (ISBN 978-0393329407)
(Required) Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (ISBN 978-1400078431)
(Required) Melissa Febos, Whip Smart: The True Story of a Secret Life (ISBN 978-0312583781)