Class

Writing Childhood: Remembering Your Backstory

Summer camp. Your best friend. Saturday cartoons. Fear of the dark. Swings. Innocence. Images provoking the familiar sting of nostalgia. But why? What stories do these embodied currents of memory have to tell us? What mystery do they carry? Where do they take us on the page?

Childhood is where your story begins. It's your backstory, your voice of innocence, vitality, truth, the birth of your inner-narrator, and what likely brought you to the page in the first place. While intimidating at first, (can’t remember, too painful, my story isn’t anything special…) writing about childhood is an exhilarating joyride, a generous and chaotic wonderland of prompts, anchoring insight, and vital sensory details.

Whether you want to write to remember, for joy, mystery, healing, insight, and/or enliven and sharpen the dialogue, place, and throughline of your memoir (novel, essay), we’ll follow the prompts down memory lane, time traveling back to our formative years, giving voice to our younger selves, beginning at birth all the way to the present moment and the voice of experience. 85% writing and sharing, light workshopping, and discussion highlighting class insights as applicable to new and existing works and keeping safe when writing about the hard stuff.

In this class, students will:
-awaken to a world of writing where you’ll bring to life essential forgotten memories, moments, dialogue, sensory details and the throughline of your memoir (novel) with self-generating prompts
-develop confidence finding and balancing the Voice of Innocence (child’s voice) with the Voice of Experience (reflective voice) including how to keep find balance between writing about the highs and the "hard stuff" of childhood
-retreat into the simple and supportive practice and process of reciprocity through sharing the gifts of writing among classmates
-expand empathy, clarity and mindfulness for self, others, your backstory, your characters, and your writing practice, including two supportive sessions (workshopping) in small groups of new short works from class

All Classes listed on the Loft website take place in Central Time.

Instructions for Accessing This Online Class

In order to access live class meetings, you must have the Zoom application downloaded to your computer. You will also need a WiFi/Internet connection throughout the duration of your scheduled meeting and a computer with audio and video capability. The information to join your Zoom classroom will be provided in your confirmation email upon registration. Please check spam folders if you do not see this email upon registration. For more information on how to use Zoom, please see our training manual here.

No class on Nov. 25th.