ON-LINE SENIOR STORY SHARE/
GUIDE FOR FUTURE INDEPENDENT MEETINGS
GETTING ORGANIZED
• Determine how many of you wish to continue. When you have a set number, decide how many small groups you’ll need. I recommend keeping the small groups to three. One-on-one can be awkward and more than three gets unruly.
• Next, think about and establish you schedule. Meeting every week (alternating small and large groups) may prove to be too ambitious in the long run, but I think it’s a good idea in the beginning to keep the momentum going. It will probably be tricky with the upcoming holidays, but perhaps you could set one large-group meeting in December during which everyone could share a holiday story.
ESTABLISHING A STRUCTURE
• I imagine you have a pretty good formula for making your small groups run, so the following tips will pertain to the large-group meetings:
• Designate a leader. Someone needs to run the meeting. You can have one person per meeting and take turns, or you elect someone for a series of meetings – whatever feels most natural to the large group. That person should be responsible for keeping things moving along. The hour goes by really quickly, so unless you are going to extend your meeting time, you should try to save chitchat for the end or before the session begins.
• Just sharing your stories with each other may be enough, but I recommend continuing with the critiquing sessions. It’s another tool you can develop and use to grow as writers.It's always important to remember when you are critiquing, you are talking about the writing – not the author, not the subject matter – but how well the mechanics are working. Making the featured essays available beforehandwill give you time to formulate your thoughts.
• If you choose to feature three readers per meeting, make sure each gets equal time – 15 minutes per is about right, leaving another 15 for housekeeping matters. You can get the critique going by offering an opinion or posing a question. Use the critiquing guidelines I gave you.
• I generally leave things pretty loose as to who reads when, but you might want to have a sign-up sheet to help maintain order and move things along.
• Itmight be good to have a periodic check-in, like we did on our first meeting. Go around the “table,” say where you are with your writing, your perceived strengths and weaknesses, what you feel you have gained to date, where you think you need improvement and where you would like to go with your writing. I know a couple of you are thinking full-fledged memoir. Talking about how you see it coming (or not coming) together will help shed some light on the process. An update every now and then gives us all some perspective as we hone our skills.
EXERCISES
• You might also try experimenting with word counts. Try 500 words one week, 1000 the next. Or, go back to a favorite essay and add another 250 or 500 words and see how that impacts things. Or try a week with no word count limit and see what people produce. Remember – try not to worry about word counts as you write. Let the ideas and words flow! Then you can go back and edit as needed.
• Speaking of word counts: Some of you are probably just enjoying putting your thoughts down on paper -- and I said, that is just as valuable as any other reason to want to write -- but for those looking to kick it up notch, a great writing exercise is to take a piece you consider "done" and reduce it by a quarter or a third. You'll be surprised how much can go once you start cutting. This might even be a good exercise to do with a partner. I learned more about writing by editing others than almost anything else. Perhaps you could trade manuscripts at one meeting and let your partner suggest places that could be cut and/or expanded. You could keep this private, part of your revision process.
• Listening to other people’s stories stir memories. One week’s assignment can use one of the featured essays as a jumping-off point to tell a relatedstory of your own. Perhaps you have a memory of reading with your grandmother. Perhaps your child got a head or a limb or digit stuck somewhere it didn’t belong. Leave your imaginations open as you listen, and let the stories you hear transport you to your own.
• Add reading memoirs to your curriculum. I have attached a reading list, but I might suggest you start with one of two of my favorite books: Monica Wood’s “When We Were the Kennedys” and Louise Dickinson Rich’s “We Took To The Woods.” These are true Maine classics. Perfect for curling up with on a cold winter’s night. You can discuss these books in your small groups or as inspiration for your own stories.
• Stories are often buried inside stories, like nesting dolls. For one session, each person could be assigned a partner who could ask a question that came to mind as you listened to the piece. (For example, how did Rachel D’s mother become such a crack shot?What were those early years in Lewiston like for Betty with her four boys?) And that will be that person's prompt for next time. Remember, you will not be writing an explanation, per se; you will be creating another scene/story from the prompt.
Here are a handful more:
• My botched adventure
• My life in crime
• The most creative present I ever gave
• The moment I said to myself, “From this point forward, everything is going to be different.”
• The fight I had with my friend
• Coming home
• My first day of work
• The lie I told
• The lesson I didn’t understand until much later
• The prize I didn’t win
• The time I missed my curfew
• The most mysterious person in my neighborhood
• The day I got lost
• My least favorite chore
• My worst kiss
But don't be afraid to take turns coming up with ones on your own. Get that brain engaged and open your imaginations! You can have a "prompt box," where people can throw ideas as they come to them and then you can draw from the box each week.