Recently I did course in Skillshare. As I attended the course which spanned for three days, I made some notes and jottings. This blog summarizes the notes that I created.
The course at the outset tries to answer one pertinet question - Why do we need life writing?
1) Personal experience provide great material.
2) No need for research or outside consultation
3) You are the expert and it is all about writing what you know and it is better to avoid any upsetting memories.
Writing memoir is all about self awareness, introspection, joyful/sad/life moments. The intention of this course is to create memories which can be passed on to the future generations. The five stages of the writing process 1) pre-writing, 2) drafting, 3) revision, 4) editing and 5) Publishing
Pre-writing is all about digging around in the dirt. This is time to discover the big idea which will in turn will become the focus of the memoir. In this stage we write without judgement and we learn to leash the monster. You should exercise the writing muscles everyday, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, or a journal entry. Creating a daily regimen that allows us to make great strides in our craft. We should learn to love the process. The three pre-writing tools: are brain storming , clustering refers to the act of mapping and free writing is always raw, uninhabited passages, no punctuation and grammar. It is focused on putting ideas to the paper. Afterwards one can highlight the words as paragraphs that surprised you. Brain storming can be described as ideas that came in short bursts. The act of grouping and organizing is known as clustering. The first draft will always be sloppy and need not be perfect. ‘Free writing helps to loosen your memory’- meaningful ideas that come up in free-writing will be used later for draft. When you write the first draft you are not striving for perfection
The five senses to make your memoir more tangible are, hearing, touch, smell, taste and sight. The events should be arranged in the chronological order like Harper Lee's - To Kill a Mocking Bird which contains a series of flashbacks, a pinch of local color and flavour of regionalism. Harper Lee places her charcters in the familair literary terrain of the American Deep South.
Looking at the brain stormed ideas and search for that word or idea that will give you the spark to start writing. Opening line/the hook which will intrigue the readers.The feeling that the opening idea or line is something which I can live with. The second paragraph can be quite realistic in the sense that you can talk about the setting and introduce some characters. Experiences portrayed should be unique and there will never be any place for over-inflated language. The balance between objectivity and subjectivity is also of prime importance.
Revision is the stage when you make your writing strong. The writing after the pre-writing is like a rough piece of cut wood. Revision allows the writer to ‘re-see’ the draft for clarity, cohesion and ‘consistency'. There are four ways to do revision - expanding underlining - highlighting passages or sentences and details to make passages more vivid, cutting - removing some words, reorganizing - make passages more coherent, and replacing - language choices - replace cliche’s with unique expressions - overused words. Revision is also the stage where you emotionally connect with your reader.
Editing - The act of cleaning grammar and spelling. It is also the stage where you start cleaning up the draft for typographical errors and grammatical errors. It is good to read the memoir aloud. find your voice - writing intricacies, hear awkward phrases, slow the reading speed enough to catch mistakes as you read - focus on each word and phrase.
Certain things that can be worked upon in the editing stage are: needless repetition, grammar mistakes, typographical errors, and spelling problems. b
Certain books that can help in your journey through the beautiful world of words are The Little Brown Handbook and The Elements of Style. The web resources that can referred to are ‘OWL - Purdue Online Writing Lab’ - owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ and www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers
Publishing - It is the final act of your writing procedure. It is all about sharing the final work,maybe in a blog,or a website or even a book. The following acts of publishing can be done through the following acts like share your work with a loved one, publish in a website or a personal blog and create a project gallery of your writings.
The course illustrates some instructions on writing and life. The main reason for the writer’s frustration are writer’s block, the fear of the blank page, and the urge to be perfect on the first day. Another feeling that haunts the writer is the 'inablility to say what I want to say and how I want to say it'. The writer is also afraid and he is plagued by the thought 'I am nervous about what I might say'
One example of perfectionism quoted in the book is about the 47 endings written by Ernest Hemingway for his novel - Farewell To Arms - just to get the correct order of words. The focus should be to write the beginning, the middle and the end. You should not aim for perfection when you write the first draft but rather you should aim to make it elegant. Memoir writing demands that the writing is truthful, authentic to oneself and the memories. It is important that the fear is conquered and it is put on a tight leash. We should always free oneself so that we can write without fear.
Writing process is always recursive and it helps when you always visit the stages that you have completed.
The course explains the classic guide and the steps in writing non-fiction, develop a routine, sit in a comfortable place with a hot beverage and hour or so.
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