Memoir Boot Camp: Write Your Memoir or Personal Essay Collection in 10 Weeks

A rough draft of 60,000 words in 10 weeks? (Note that published memoirs are typically 60 to 80,000 words.) How is that possible? Break it down. We typically average anything between 500 and 1,000 words per hour, so you can easily free write 6,000 words per week across four to seven writing sessions. Do it for 10 weeks, and you’ll have a 60,000-word draft. (If your goal is another number, you can break it down accordingly.)

How will we do it? By working together to set our daily and weekly writing goals, via mutual support and—most importantly—accountability. Please note: you are encouraged to set your own word count goal.

My goal for you as a teacher and facilitator is for you to generate new work, or edit existing pages, while at the same time learning important elements of the craft of memoir and personal essay, all in a space where you will feel supported to do this important work in community.

This 10-week course is the perfect way to begin, re-engage with a stalled project, or keep going with a memoir or personal essay project in the context of highly supportive accountability.

Accountability:

We will discuss a manageable daily and weekly word count target at the beginning of the course—it will be different for everyone;

We will make our goals clear to ourselves and each other. By making a goal public via accountability partnership, we have a much better chance of success;

We will check in daily via a supportive What’s App group to help keep on track with our writing goals outside of class;

In class, we will write for 45 minutes to an hour via generative prompts designed as part of important craft learnings discussed during the first hour.

Office Hours: one-on-one time with me to discuss both the bigger picture aspects of your project as well as highly specific elements that you need help with.

Google Drive to house course materials, complete with relevant slides to support course work, as well as chapters from exemplary memoirs and personal essays in PDF form. These materials will be accessible during and after the course, indefinitely. The reading will help us to learn to read as writers, thus feeding into deliberate practice of the craft of memoir. As such, there will be no need to buy books.

Schedule: This course takes place every Thursday from 5:30 to 7:30 pm (GMT) for 10 weeks via Zoom. Each two-hour class will be divided between craft and co-writing time (via generative writing prompts), one hour for each.

Student numbers are capped at 10.

Weekly: starting on 16th April, classes will run for 10 weeks on Thursdays, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm (GMT / 1:30 to 3:30 ET). The course dates are 16th, 23rd, 30th of April; 7th, 21st, 28th of May; 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th of June. Note: there is no class on 14th May.

Each class will be divided between Craft and Co-writing. We will discuss, and practice, how to

outline your project to provide yourself a road map which you can use throughout the 10 weeks by identifying “pillar scenes” that play a crucial place in your story. 1,000 words an hour is easy to achieve, once you know what you’re writing about. The outline with key scenes and moments will give you a map to follow so that when you begin each writing session, you will know where you’re going.

sink into a supportive, nonjudgemental slow writing space where you will write from a place of safety.

use free writing to write your story as well as reflect on it, and as such progressively home in on the deeper story you want to tell.

map plot points, obligatory scenes and characters.

Deepen into your scenes and exposition (exposition is the connective, informative prose that links scenes together and moves the story forward).

identify the “story within the story,” or through-line / central narrative thread.

find a structure that works for you.

develop your narrative voice.

work with leitmotifs, by implementing recurring images, or thematic elements.

use time in a convincing way to echo how memory works.

Outcomes

You can generate a 60 to 70,000 word draft of your project, if you commit to the process.

You will have a greater understanding of important craft elements in creative nonfiction and will be provided with practical, simple and actionable takeaways that you can use during and after the course.

You can join a literary community that you can maintain after the course is over.