Memoir Writing Workshops:

"Writing the Spiritual Memoir"

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"Seven Types of Memoir"

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"Writing the Memoir"

Thomas Larson has given two-hour, all-day, and weeklong workshops at bookstores, writing centers, libraries, writers' guilds, private groups, and universities for beginning and advanced memoirists throughout the United States.

From 2007 to 2019, venues include:

Cuyahoga Library, South Euclid Branch (Cleveland, OH)

Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference (Homer, AK)

Santa Fe Summer Workshop (Santa Fe, NM)

Hudson Valley Writers' Center (Sleepy Hollow, NY)

MFA Low-Residency Program (Ashland, OH)

The Writers' Center (Bethesda, MD)

The Writers' Workshoppe (Port Townsend, WA)

Warwick’s Bookstore (La Jolla, CA)

Ghost Ranch (Santa Fe, NM)

Ghost Ranch Fall Writing Festival (Abiquiu, NM)

St. Louis Writer’s Guild

Lancaster (PA) Literary Guild

Writers’ Center of Indiana (Indianapolis, IN)

Mobile Writers Guild (Mobile, AL)

Bookpeople (Austin, TX)

Houston (TX) Public Library

Palm Springs (CA) Public Library

Book Passage (Corte Madera, CA)

Margaret Mitchell House (Atlanta, GA)

OLLI Memoir Writers (Auburn, AL)

Clemente Program (Port Hadlock, WA)

Wordstock (Portland, OR)

Kansas City (MO) Public Library

Columbia (MO) Public Library

The Loft (Minneapolis, MN)

Worthington Library (Columbus, OH)

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"Writing About Illness"

An Annotated List

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Price: email me

Memoir Inventory Print E-mail

 

Memoir Inventory

A guide to understanding where you are with your memoir and to keeping the book going.

These questions apply to what you have written or what you will write.

A reminder: A memoir is a narrative, descriptive, or expository form of writing that focuses on the meaning and intensity of a singular relationship in the author’s life.

  1. How much work have you done on this book?
  2. What evidence do you have for your book?
  3. Where does the memoir take place?
  4. Besides you, who are the main characters?
  5. Who’s alive, who’s dead?
  6. Who do you want to read your book?
  7. What’s the highpoint of the tale? (a plot point or an emotional climax; outer v. inner)
  8. How much time elapses, that is, the time of the story, not of the life?
  9. How does your memoir end?
  10. How does your memoir begin?
  11. List three big cultural, political, historical events that are part of your memoir. (9/11; women’s movement; invention of email; Tea Party)
  12. Who is telling the tale? How much of your remembered self is telling this tale, how much of your remembering self is the teller?
  13. What do you have trouble remembering or what have you possibly misremembered?
  14. What are the strongest emotions you’ve experienced writing this book?
  15. What is the emotional growth of the story? How do you change from beginning to end?
  16. If you’re writing about the living, what sorts of problems or surprises or benefits with them will you encounter or have you encountered? Might this extend to writing about the dead?
  17. What’s the hardest part?
  18. How will you practically keep your memoir going? List three things you’ll work on.
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