Why I Love My Writing Workshop

***PSA!!!***

Spill the Beans is on a one-day delay this week. Ryan and I normally record it on Sunday evenings, but it was our monthiversary and we invited company for dinner, so we didn't get it recorded! And then he worked all day yesterday, so I didn't have time to get it all polished and presentable last night after we recorded it. It will be here for you TOMORROW!

Meanwhile, this past weekend, I taught the fourth of my five workshop classes over at the Marion Public Library. Every single month, I love this workshop a little more, and even though I know I've told you about it every single month, I wanted to blog about it today so I could tell you that I'd love to do it again sometime!

I only have one more Saturday to spend with the good people at the library, but I would so very much love to do this class again in a church, another library, or even someone's home with a group of friends. It's been fun for me to teach, but more than that, it's exciting to see the people IN the workshop get excited about preserving their own stories. This past workshop brought out the biggest glimmers of joy I've seen yet, because people had in their hands some of their own beginnings, committed to paper, and it made them so happy to see results, even small beginnings of results, coming to life.

The first time we came together, back in June, I taught the attendees how to begin brainstorming. Let's face it: writing about part or all of your life can be a pretty daunting undertaking, especially if you've lived a plethora of years! So many memories flood in, and it can be difficult to know what to do with it all. So the first session focuses on brainstorming and organizing your ideas so they feel a bit more manageable.

Then in July, the group brought their brainstorming list and I taught them how to go back through their memories and relive them using their five senses. We talked about how to make the stories more interesting and inviting by allowing readers to use their senses to experience the moments like we did.

In August, they learned how to launch in and begin to tell the stories of the memories they had been preparing for the last two sessions:

And then this month, we talked about how to edit, embellish, and reduce those stories so they're polished, beautiful, and pleasing to read:

Next month we'll wrap up by learning how to present our little writing babies to an audience and share our thoughts with others. (Simultaneously terrifying and rewarding.)

As I said, I have loved teaching this, and I would love to do it again! This series of workshops is not for those who want to become famous, published authors. (I'd be a terrible choice to teach that, since I'm not famous! Ha!) This series is for the average person who wants to capture part or all of his or her story and share it with future generations.

It's been encouraging to watch this group blossom along the way, so I think the steps are manageable and working for them. If you have a group of friends who wants to learn this sort of thing, let me know! I'd love to serve you if we can work it out! (This would also work great as a weekend retreat or one-day class. It might even work better in a smaller time frame, since I know people's schedules are so crazy and it's hard for people to commit across a long period of time.

I'm grateful the library brought me in, and I've learned so much just from being able to share with this little group. Looking forward to the grand finale in October!