MEMOIR WRITING CLASSES

I’ve had quite a few people ask me if I’m running any memoir writing classes and the answer was always, “No, but I could…” And now, I’ve done it. I’ve got myself organised and I am going to be teaching a memoir writing course from September 2012.

The class will be taking place at Whitstable’s lovely Horsebridge Arts and Community Centre here in Kent, UK.

Here are the details. I hope very much to see you there. Please tell your friends and family.

Memoir Writing Class

“A memoir is how one remembers one’s own life.” Gore Vidal

Always wanted to write your life story? Ghostwriter and founder of Your Memoir Marnie Summerfield Smith leads a ten-week course to show you how.

Do you secretly wish you could write your memoir? Maybe you’ve started writing and now you’re a bit stuck. Or perhaps you love reading memoirs and are keen to think about them a bit more deeply. Whatever your interest you will be made very welcome on my new course.

I am a writer of 11 years experience and a published ghostwriter. In 2011 I founded yourmemoir.co.uk through which I help people write their memoirs. With this course, I will be helping people who want to try writing themselves but feel they need some guidance and support.

We will look at why we write memoirs, who we are writing for, what we should include, what we should leave out, structure, how to remember, themes, voice, the distinct types of writing that make up a memoir, how long a memoir should be, keeping the reader interested and what to do with our memoirs once they are written. I can offer advice on publishing.

I aim to keep the class small and friendly. Sessions will consist of feedback from the previous week, discussion and writing exercises. Bring a notebook and pen. Ongoing support will be available when the course is completed.

“That’s one regret I have. I didn’t get as much of the family history as I could have for the kids.” Robert De Niro

The class begins on September 10, 2012 for 10 weeks (excluding Oct 29 – half term). Mondays 12.30-2.30pm. Cost £80 payable weekly £8. Visit yourmemoir.co.uk Call Marnie on 07710 721 389 or email marnie@yourmemoir.co.uk for details.

THEMES IN MEMOIRS

Much of last week, due to a lousy cold, I was under a blanket and a dog on the sofa. This meant that I was able to get more reading done than usual. I read two short books. The first, Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas, I had read before and loved, obviously. The second, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, I had attempted before but been unable to get through it. It’s sometimes like that with books, isn’t it. I don’t know why. I chose both these memoirs because they are short and I wanted to tick ‘read books’ off my to-do list. Sad, maybe. But true.

I’m currently thinking about teaching some memoir writing one-day workshops and possibly a weekly course. While pondering the course structure, I thought that one topic I would be sure to discuss with my students would be that of themes in memoirs.

Three Dog Life and Diving Bell deal with similar themes – loss, grief, extreme trauma, courage, coping, change (to put it mildly), illness, imprisonment of kinds, adapting and the nature of life. Nothing major then!

Abigail Thomas’s story tells of how her husband, Richard, got hit by a car while out walking their dog, Harry, and suffered permanent brain trauma which destroyed his short-term memory. I bought this book originally because it had dogs on the cover. I am always interested in people’s relationships with dogs. Of course this book is mainly about Abigail’s relationship with Richard and how that changes but the comfort she gets from her dogs is reassuring. It tells me, a dog lover, that I might be able to get through most things if I surround myself with dogs. I love this book and  am now going to buy Abigail’s book Thinking About Memoir. I can’t wait to read it and I’ll let you know how I get on.

The title Three Dog Life is a saying of the Australian Aborigines who sleep with their dogs on cold nights, the coldest being a ‘three dog night’. A beautiful expression of the relationship between dogs and humans.

Diving Bell is about Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was the editor-in-chief of French Elle. He suffered a stroke and was left with locked-in syndrome. He was totally paralysed apart from hs left eyelid – with which he was able to dictate his book. The title of this book refers to the diving bell, which he feels he is wearing, weighing him down, trapping him, locking him in. The butterfly is his mind, free to fly wherever it wishes. I don’t know why I didn’t get through this book the first time because I whizzed through it this time around. Bauby reassures me that as horrific as his condition was, I as a writer might, just might, be able to get through it, if only I could still write in some way.

I recommend both these books to the memoir lover. They are both sad but uplifting at times too. I don’t feel totally comfortable that someone else’s suffering was uplifting for me, but life is fragile and I am grateful to both of these writers for sharing their experiences.

What are the themes in the memoirs you’ve read?

 

YOUR MEMOIR ON THE RADIO…

As you may know, a couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed on BBC Radio Kent about Your  Memoir. The interviewer was the lovely broadcaster Pat Marsh. Some of you have said that you couldn’t listen in, but would like to hear it, so here it is on jolly old Audioboo…

You need to click on the little picture of my face. A ‘play’ arrow comes up. Please let me know what you think below…

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE A WINNER…

…So, slightly delayed (due, happily, to extreme busyness* caused by a mini publicity campaign and drop-in sessions) I am announcing the winner of February’s Moleskine of the Month!

There is a scientific way of doing this (a widget I can get for my website apparently) but in pursuit of cracking on with it, I wrote down the intials of my Facebook likers, the people subscribed to my mailing list, everyone on Twitter who re-tweeted the tweet and asked my neighbour to close her eyes and stab a pencil onto the list and the winner is…MARTIN GRANT, A FACEBOOK LIKER!

Well done Martin and thank you all for entering. Please keep your eyes peeled for March’s Moleskine of the Month. You can enter by liking Your Memoir on Facebook, re-tweeting my Moleskine tweets on Twitter and by signing up to my mailing list at yourmemoir.co.uk

As I say, I have been extremely busy. This is because some recent publicity around some drop-in sessions I organised resulted in lots of people coming forward to enquire about having their memoir written . Many of the people I met said to me that they have been carrying their story around for years – unsure of what to do with it. Then, seeing an article about my service in local paper or hearing me on local radio, they got in touch. How sad to think that these stories might have been lost forever or that the authors might never have got their experiences off their chest by writing it down – a common desire. A sad thought, but how glad I am that they found me.

So, what sort of stories are coming forward? I’m keeping Your Memoir diary and have just looked through to see. Here’s a list so far…

…domestic violence, sailing, adventure, charity work, travel, business, being a war baby, life as a dominatrix, brain injury, WWII evacuation, love, sex, life in a Barnados home, the Dutch resistance, life in a German concentration camp, adoption, finding unknown siblings, IVF, incest, the navy, army injury, secrets the family don’t know to be published after my death, refugee experiences, alien abduction, being a prisoner of war and life as a London cabbie.

Surprised? What would you like to write about? Let me know…

‘COME AND SAY HI – YOUR MEMOIR EVENT’

On Monday, March 12th 2012, I’m holding two FREE drop-in sessions at the Horsebridge Arts and Community Centre in Whitstable, Kent (UK).

This is a lovely opportunity for you to pop by, say hello and ask me any questions about having your life story written from how the process works and the costs, to the time it takes and about the printing.

I set up www.yourmemoir.co.uk so that having a memoir is accessible to everyone, so here I am – accessible and willing to share cake, no less. Plus, if it’s a nice day this is a great opportunity to have a wander about on Whitstable beach and even pop to the harbour for some shellfish or hot, delicious chippies!

Your Memoir offers gift vouchers, so do come if you want to know more about giving the gift of a memoir to your parents or grandparents, perhaps for a special birthday or anniversary. So many people tell me they regret not having asked their relatives more about their lives before they died.

Remember, anyone can have a memoir written. You don’t have to had an extraordinarily dramatic life because your memories alone will be precious to the next generation. That said, if anyone does have a particularly interesting tale, I can present it to my literary agent for consideration and we can chat more about this process at the sessions. Plenty of people have already started writing their memoirs, and I also offer a reading and editing service.

I’ll be in workshop five on the top floor (there is a lift) between 10am until midday and then 6pm until 8pm. If you can’t make these times, let me know by calling 07710 721 389 or email marnie at yourmemoir dot co dot uk. I’ll be around all day and we can find a quiet spot to talk either in the Horsebridge cafe or elsewhere. Or I can meet you another day – no obligation.

I look forward to meeting you on Monday, March 12th. I’ll be offering my usual discounts to pensioners, Armed Forces personnel, people with disabilities and those in financial hardship as well as a special Meeting Marnie discount – regardless of whether or not you bring me cake or let me share the aforementioned chippies…

See you then! Marnie

P.S. I’m looking for opportunities to do free talks about Your Memoir, so if you know of an organisation that might consider this, please get in touch.

‘MEMOIRS ARE FOR THE NOSEY, RIGHT?’

So, why do you read memoirs?

Is your own life so boring that you need to know what other people get up to?

Wouldn’t you be better off living your life rather than reading about someone else’s?

Of course not. Humans are curious by nature and are especially curious about what other humans get up to. You can read about other people’s lives and still have your own. But asking this question has led me to ponder how I choose the memoirs I read. Time is precious and I don’t want to waste my time on muppets. The Muppets maybe, but not muppets.

I can’t remember how I came to be interested in The Mitfords, an aristocratic English family of six daughters and one son. Possibly I read about about fashion icon and heiress Daphne Guinness, who is often referred to in her status as grandaughter of Diana Mitford and was lured to read more. The six Mitford sisters in whom I am mainly interested were, or are (one remains alive, Deborah or Debo, born in 1920) extraordinary. One sister married Sir Oswald Mosley, another was infatuated with Hitler and a third – Jessica, or Decca – was a socialist and ran away to the Spanish Civil War.

All of these very different choices require a great deal of conviction, I think. Confidence in one’s own decisions, regardless of the ethics and I think that’s what I find interesting about the Mitfords.

The memoir I have just read is called Hons and Rebels and is by Decca Mitford, the fifth sister (pictured above, courtesy of LeslieBrodybook.com). It’s very well-written, written as Decca speaks I imagine, and goes into great detail about the upbringing of the Mitford children with their parents Muv and Farve, their staff and governesses. It does answer some of the questions I had about how the Mitfords grew up to be so Mitford-esque. Mainly, I think that isolated boredom and aristocratic brains are a potent mix. The Mitfords, imaginative and curious, influenced by their desperation to escape Swinbrook and rattled by their combative father, went on to live hugely dramatic lives. Diana, Nancy (a novelist), Unity, Debo and Decca in particular. Their family motto could have been, ‘To hell with consequences’.

Of course there’s more to the Mitfords than I could ever understand or blog about. They were and are real people, not cartoon characters. Decca does a good job of painting them all sympathetically but honestly showing the devotion and division that existed between her and her siblings.

As well as because of their aristocratic poise (different from my own Whitstabubblian poise), their life in 20s and 30s England (a fascinating time) and startling life choices, I was drawn to the Mitfords and this memoir because their lives couldn’t be further from my own.

If you’re interested in Evolutionary Psychology – the science of how our behaviour is connected to our evolution – then you might know that curiosity is supposed to be linked to intelligence. The more curious we are, the more intelligent we become.

So it’s good to be curious. It’s good to read memoirs.

And it was great to learn a lot more about the Mitfords.

How do you choose who you read about? I’d love to know…

Reblogged from The Road to Myself: Dying to Live (Memoir):

‘MOLESKINE – ICONIC WRITERS’ JOURNAL AND HOW TO WIN ONE’

Who doesn’t love a new notebook?

The promise, the anticipation, the questions…

What shall I write in it? My novel, my memoir, my poems, a list of my favourite shoes…

Will I keep it pristine or let time and passion dog-ear its corners?

Will I hide it in a drawer or shall I leave it proudly on the coffee table?

Will I choose something patterned, something plain or something I can customise?

I have a mixture of notebooks. Some are very beautiful and expensive, others are very beautiful and cheap – usually vintage ones that I have bought at flea markets. Many have been gifts and some I have scavenged from my husband’s side of the study. Some of my notebooks are nothing more than cheap exercise books. They sit in a pile on my shelf, waiting to be used, hoping to be useful.

I have several Moleskine journals. Traditionally Moleskines (used by Ernest Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin among others) are black, but mine are turquoise. I love colour. It was difficult to choose between the turquoise and red, but I live near the sea, so I went with the blue. My turquoise Moleskines are filled with quotes I have copied from the writers interviews in The Paris Review, a favourite one being Dorothy Parker:

“I hate almost all rich people but I think I’d be darling at it.”

And haiku I have written:

Tumbling black plastic

collides, entwines with swirling leaf

carefree both

To celebrate everything that’s thrilling about notebooks and Moleskines in particular, I am going to run a monthly competition to win a Moleskine journal. They’ll be different each month, sometimes large, sometimes small, sometimes black, sometimes something more juicy. All you have to do is go to the Your Memoir website here and sign up where it says Mailing List. On the last day of each month I’ll pick a single name at random from all those who have signed up and send that person the Moleskine of the Month.

But before you zip off to do that, tell me about the notebooks you have known and loved (and are currently lusting after) below…

What is a Memoir? (And Why I Wrote One)

Reblogged from Brock Heasley:

Whenever I tell people I’ve written a memoir (not something I do with great regularity–it’s usually my wife who does the telling), I often get the question, “What is a Memoir?” I usually begin my response by saying that it’s an autobiography that isn’t an autobiography, but that only confuses them more. So let’s unpack this properly.

A memoir is a person’s written, first person account of their own life, or, more typically, a portion of their life.

Read more… 586 more words

I really enjoyed this blog by Brock Heasley and hope you do too...

‘IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED’

I began to read Sebastian Junger’s book War soon after it was published in 2010 but I couldn’t get in to it. I think it’s because the prologue includes an intimidating amount of information and I was worried the book would be a test of remembering who was who and what was where.

But a few weeks ago just before New Year’s, my husband Dyfed Edwards (who writes as Thomas Emson) and I went to Anglesey in Wales to visit his family. There is no Internet connection at the home of my parents-in-law, so I always pack plenty of books and somehow, War made it into the stack. Once I’d made my way through several of 2011′s unread Harper’s Bazaar magazines, I picked up War and tried again.

War is the result of five trips Junger made to the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan between June 2007 and June 2008 for Vanity Fair. He was embedded with a US army platoon and strictly speaking the book is non-fiction. But to me, it is also a memoir of his experience of being as close to war as a civilian can get.

I have a read more than a dozen non-fiction books on the war in Afghanistan but none of them are like this. Books about fighting are often like fighting, fast and frenzied. But in War, Junger gives the characters, the action and the scenery room to breath. He doesn’t shy away from the long stretches where the soldiers have nothing to do.

‘The men ran out of things to say about three months ago, so they just sit around in a mute daze. One day I watched Money come out of the hooch, look around, grunt, and go back inside for another three hours’ sleep. A summer shower comes through, briefly turning the air sweet and pungent, but the raindrops are small and sharp as needles and do almost nothing for the heat. “I used to live a thousand feet above sea level, and we’d find seashells in the rocks along the side of the road,” O’Byrne finally says. No one answers for about five minutes.’

I find soldiers and their extreme way of living absolutely fascinating. I am intrigued by their psychology. Not the killing but their willingness to die for each other. And how their altruism overrides their survival instincts or serves the survival instinct of our species long-term, even if it means individual soldiers die.

The blurb says Junger’s objective was simple and ambitious: to convey what war actually feels like. For me, he did this elegantly. I’m so glad I picked it up a second time.

Do you read about war? Which books, which wars and why?