First We Dare to Live – Then We Dare to Write

 When writing personal essays, memoir and confessional poetry, we often play it safe, catering to the conservative sensibilities of our outer self and the reader. But what if we dared to write about those things we think, but do not say? Or the things we avoid thinking about entirely? What if we went from one dimensional writing to multi dimensional writers.

Spiritual leader Osho said, “You can attain a very high peak if you are one dimensional, but you will only be a peak.  I would like you to become the whole range of the Himalayas, not just a peak, but peaks upon peaks.”  In this unique time in history, becoming multi dimensional is essential to the creative process, when writers need to discover the combination of words and truths to create stories that are as expansive as our human experience.

We live in vulnerable times – times that call for a new way into story. T.S. Eliot wrote “Last year’s words belong to last year’s language –  and next year’s words await another voice.” 

“During times of great uncertainty,

we have to intentionally choose courage.

It is not the default.”

Brene Brown 

Sample Memoirs 

In this next 6-week workshop, students will study work from six exploratory memoirs to create writing prompts that lead us into Daring Writing to find our truths, then amplify them in our voice.  In this world where we all feel vulnerable, having the courage to write our truths is as important as breathing. Writers will create their life stories using a fresh, new perspective, pulling inspiration from poetry, philosophy and contemporary writers who are changing the literary landscape:

“Each person comes into this world with a

specific destiny, and some of us are meant

to write their story and share it.  

Some message has to be delivered

to the world, through a book or spoken word

or a poem.

You are not a writer accidentally.

You are here meaningfully.

The whole intends to do something through you,

but first you must show up.”

Topics explored in the next six-week course include:

SHAME 

Guilt is “I made a mistake. Shame is I am a mistake.”  So begins the beautiful, heart stopping memoir by John Hendrickson “Life on Delay.” Shame is paralyzing, it’s a windowless room, but it shapes who we become and who we are becoming when we write about it and break through it it to empower ourself and others.  Shame is an emotion that makes for relatable, human stories and human evolution, and we will explore shame in story and memoir to embrace the emotion as part of the life-story.

LOVE & SEXUALITY 

Love and sexuality shape us, launch us and continues to mold us at every age.  Love and the expression of love through the body is a verb, an action, a sacrament.  There is a power and an engine to love that expresses what is in us and helps give shape back to the world. The love in the world bounces back at us, and helps to reshape our inner selves.   Love and sexuality belongs in stories, poetry and essays. To leave it out is to give disservice to the story, but to add love and sexuality to our stories is to offer a dimension. We are each other’s love stories.

SECRETS & TRUST

Bell Hooks wrote “while privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. We do not usually know the emotional costs of keeping a secret until the truth is disclosed. Secrecy ofen involves lying, and lying sets the stage for betrayal and violation of trust.  Secrets in ancestral lineage carries forward into future generations.  Many memoirs are launched on a secret revealed, and the tense issue of trust. In this class we will use exercises to reveal and unpeel the layers of secrets and ways to reveal them that turn them into a page turning story.

BOUNDARIES 

My mother walked around the house smoking in her underwear, with one breast. We had to beg her to put on clothes when our friends came over, and eventually we just went to their home. Good stories are often about times when we couldn’t hold a boundary, or when we crossed the boundary of another.   Or someone in our life whose boundaries were so different from our own. Boundaries are a topic in self help and therapy sessions over the world, and yet we all know how hard they are to hold, and how great stories are often about crossing boundaries.  I bet you can think of one right now!

RISK

Author John Shedd wrote – “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”  We take risk in life, and then we take creative risks to put that truth onto the page in a way that re creates what was and is at stake. In this class, we are going to explore risk inside our stories, in a way we explored risk in our lives. We risk our hearts, we risk our reputation, we risk what people will say about us if we fail or change or shout. Risk is a key ingredient in a great story and a great poem.

IMAGERY AND METAPHOR

Poet Carl Phillips, who just won the Pulitzer Prize for his book of extraordinary poetry, uses imagery and metaphor to show us the deeper meaning of faith, love, gratitude and loss.  We will hear from Carl in talks and through his carefully selected poetry to remember how to link imagery in the natural world to express big truths that might be hard to access any other way. A wonderful exploration of bold, expansive writing through a master of poetic form. Carl’s book The Art of Daring – Risk, Restlessness, Imagination is being used for this series.

*Topics subject to change