Memoir Workshop Series
with Allegra Huston and James Navé on Zoom
Dates for the next series will be announced soon
Each session limited to 10 participants
In these half-day stand-alone workshops, you’ll learn how to use your surface memories as portals to what’s hidden from everyday view. You’ll build your own map, which will guide into the deepest parts of your experience and, just as important, guide you back out!
Memoir is exploration and transformation. Discover your voice, your perspective, and your story.
No previous writing experience is necessary. But why not join us for the Prompt of the Week on Saturday or Thursday and get a free taste of the Imaginative Storm method? Click the links in the footer of this apge for times and Zoom link.
Working with Your Memories
If you’ve ever tried to “write up” a memory and found it lifeless on the page, you know that simply recording your memories won’t make a compelling memoir. Recalling a memory is one thing; translating its full vibrancy into writing is another.
The memories you can access easily have been shaped and interpreted by your rational mind. They’re no longer the record of reality; they’re evidence of the story your rational mind has made of your life.
Join us, and discover ways to go deeper into the raw, moment-to-moment, sometimes almost forgotten experiences of your life.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
not to fear the reality under the story
how to trace the contours of what you don’t remember
how to recover lost details with ease
how to bring life back to a story you’ve told often
how to move between the you now and the you then
Find Yourself in the Center of Your Story
You may not be famous. You may not have done anything particularly extraordinary. So, why would anyone want to read your memoir? Actually, are you even entitled to write one?
Well, here’s a thought: readers care about characters in novels, and they’re not even real. So you have an instant advantage. You’re real. You’ve made it through some element of life’s journey that you believe is worth sharing. You’re right. It is.
Join us, and find the deep story of your memoir. It;s not what happened to you. It’s what you made of what happened to you, and what it made of you.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
how to identify and develop the deep story of your memoir
how to know which incidents are part of your story, and which aren’t
why all memoirs have a happy ending—and what a happy ending is
how to find the connection point between your story and your readers
how to write about yourself without seeming egocentric
Give Yourself Permission to Write Anything
When you write memoir, you’re writing about real people, so self-censorship can be a problem. You don’t want to hurt people you love. You don’t want to look bad in public. You might worry that you’ll be criticized for a belief or a stance you’re taking.
A strong memoir is honest. So how do you square that with valid real-life concerns? If you don’t face this question head-on, there are two likely results: either you’ll stop writing, or what you produce will feel flat-footed and bland.
Join us, and explore strategies for balancing authenticity with sensitivity. You’ll finish the session with a newly empowered voice.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
how to generate material freely, without self-censorship
how to navigate the minefield of writing about real people
how to find comedy in intense feelings
how to imbue your writing with tenderness
how to calibrate your sense of self in relation to other people’s view of you
Connect Your Body to Your Writing
When you feel something, physical or emotional, you feel it in your body. If you want your reader to feel something, they need to feel it in their body too.
When you’re writing, it’s easy to get distracted by the words in your head. But vivid, emotionally powerful writing doesn’t come just from your head. You need to get your body (and your reader’s body) in on the act.
Join us, and explore techniques for bringing all your senses into your writing, so that your reader feels along with you.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
how to make your reader’s mirror neurons fire
how to bring the texture of a moment to life
how to find details that matter
how to re-immerse yourself in the truth of the past moment
how to pack an emotional punch
Time-Travel into the Present of Your Past
It’s easy to identify a time and place, but it’s hard to conjure up the texture of the event: the pleasures and anxieties, the incidental details, the idiosyncrasies of the people and the place.
A remembered event is a very different thing from a lived event. Our rational minds shape the messiness of life into memories, and once that’s happened, your “remembering” muscles can’t recover what was edited out. So, how do you retrieve the authenticity of those past experiences?
Join us, and discover techniques for transporting yourself into the present moments of the past. And as you recover details, the emotions you felt then will rise up in you again as you write.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
how to describe an event with authenticity
how to avoid a “know-all tone” in your writing
how to locate emotional resonance in the details of place
how to invest into the present you’re writing about with a sense of past and future
how to use location to shape your story
Power Your Story with Nature’s Electricity
As humans, we’re creatures of nature and creatures of time. These forces shape you and shape your life. But it’s easy to overlook this wider context when you’re focused on yourself and your story.
Every moment in your life is located somewhere on the space-time continuum. Forces of growth and decay are at work on you and on everything around you. Our thoughts and actions and emotions are influenced by the generations that came before us, and perhaps by what we imagine or hope for future generations.
Join us, and look through new lenses in your writing! In this session we’ll work with prompts that widen and sharpen your focus: beyond, before, beneath. Tap into the energy of our living universe.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
how to make connections with the natural world in your writing
how to make quantum leaps as you set a scene
how to locate your story within a living history
how to rack focus to micro and macro
how to notice what you’re used to overlooking
Explore the Mechanics of Social Intuition
The need to belong is a primary human motivation. We’re a herd species—but we’re also individuals, with a need to feel uniquely ourselves. Rules are made to ease social interaction—but, as they say, rules are made to be broken.
This tug-of-war between conflicting needs underpins every social interaction. It’s mediated by multiple levels of unspoken communication: rites, customs, catchphrases, dogmas, and laws.
Join us, and delve into Socialese: the unspoken language we use to communicate. Learn how to mine this rich material to reveal character and drive story.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
to notice “Socialese”: the unspoken language of human communication
to see the kaleidoscope of tribal affiliations that humans create
to track the undercurrents (or subtext) of a situation
to invest ordinary activities with social significance
to suggest aspects of your characters’ lives outside the story you’re telling
See into the Private Chambers of the Heart
Why do people do what they do? We’re all mysteries to one another, and often to ourselves. In the days before psychology existed, it was the job of writers to portray the vast range of what humans do, and why we might do it.
You may know the function of a character in the story you’re telling, but if that’s all you show of them, they’ll feel flat and lifeless.
Join us, and learn how to identify tender spots: the sensitivities that, when pressed, drive people to do something—whatever that person thinks might assuage the hurt. Characters aren’t recipes . . . but a sense of the ingredients suggests sweet or sour, light or heavy, nutritious or toxic.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
how to understand what drives a person’s actions
how to create strong, multi-dimensional characters: good and bad
how to give a sense of what it’s like to be in the presence of a particular person
how to honor the individuality of minor characters
how to convincingly portray a character with whom you seem to have nothing in common
Fuel Your Story with Inner Necessity
Have you had the experience of telling a story to a group of friends and it goes down brilliantly, but when you put it on the page, it’s as lively as a dead fish? It’s a common problem with memoir writing, so don’t worry, it’s not because you’re a bad writer.
A story is more than a sequence of events. It’s driven by people taking action to get what they want or what they need—whether they know it or not. If your reader cares about the people, they care about the story.
Join us, and excavate the driving forces in the story you want to tell. Learn how to give your story momentum and emotional resonance.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
the building blocks of a strong narrative
what gives a story momentum, and why momentum gets lost
how to know what comes next
how to ramp up the excitement in your story
how to know where your story begins and where it ends
Tap into the Power of Paradox
Nothing is ever only what it seems, and everything holds the seed of its opposite. But oppositions aren’t merely binary. They offer portals into new dimensions of your story.
Maybe it’s a clash of values between the hero and the villain. Maybe it’s a clash of desires between lovers or close friends. Maybe it’s an eruption of circumstance that throws certainties into chaos.
Join us, and learn to use paradox to power your writing. When you embrace paradox, you embrace possibility—and that’s where the surprises come from.
Register now. Limit 10.
What you’ll learn:
how to play in the paradox sandbox
how to balance a scene on the fulcrum of an opposition
the pleasure of generating a paradoxical image
how to flip your conception of a scene upside-down
how to use imagined realities to power up your story
