At our 2010 conference, we added a Friday afternoon workshop for those who arrived at the conference site early and wanted to get right to work thinking, talking, writing, and sharing. The Writing Alchemy workshop, led by Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler, was hugely successful, so we're doing it again!
This year, Matilda and Kendra will lead a follow-on workshop designed to help you create a strong and effective story structure. And Jeanne Guy will offer her "Re-Story Circle," a writing / exploring / conversation process that will help you discover the power you have in creating your life.
Two exciting approaches to lifestory, three inspiring teachers. Enrollment in both workshops is limited, so sign up early.
Matilda Butler & Kendra Bonnett
Pre-Conference Workshop
1. It's 10 pm, Do You Know Where Your Story Is? Seven Steps to Successful Story Structure
Do you get so involved in the mechanics of writing that your true story gets lost? Do you worry about story structure but aren't sure how to develop, much less follow, one that is appropriate for your story? You want to write from your heart and tell your story. Yet, just like a house without a strong foundation and frame, the elements of your writing—character development, emotional expression, sensory description, strong dialogue, and time and place—may collapse under their own weight without a well-designed and executed framework for your memoir.
In our pre-conference workshop, we'll arm you with a powerful set of tools, techniques and devices to build a framework for your writing that will let the meaning of your story shine through. We call our simple, seven-step process Structural Alchemy™.
Let's play the Build-A-Story Game: Memoir-Writing Edition and in the process have fun building our memoirs by mixing and matching the components of a well-structured story. You'll play, write and share in this workshop.
As a bonus, you'll leave with an extra copy of our Build-A-Story Game that you can share with your writing group or writing friends. Come join us for an afternoon of story structure fun that will prepare you to successfully frame your memoir.
Our goals for the workshop:
- Introduce participants to the critical role of story structure and the building blocks (tools, techniques and devices) for framing the memoir.
- Provide participants with our seven simple structural steps for creating a strong story framework that can support the memoir.
- Give participants many hands-on opportunities to apply each step of Structural Alchemy with writing exercises, games and fun activities.
- Motivate participants to use effective story structure by sharing their writing and analyzing successful approaches to story shaping in the ensuing discussion.
Methods we'll use to achieve these goals:
- We'll use a PowerPoint presentation to introduce the components and formulas for story structure.
- We'll describe the seven principles (steps) of Structural Alchemy and show examples.
- Participants will team up in pairs to play our Build-A-Story Game: Memoir-Writing Edition and apply each of the seven principles to build story structures.
- Teams will share their stories with the group.
- To drive home the seven steps, we'll open the workshop to a discussion about story structure, using exercises, games and activities as starting points to stimulate discussion.
- Participants will have a chance to ask questions about Structural Alchemy.
Benefits participants can expect:
- Participants will understand the concept of story structure.
- They will see how a lack of story structure gets in the way of the message of their memoir.
- They will get to reinforce each lesson and step through writing games, exercises and activities.
- They will have an opportunity to share their writing with other participants.
You may register for this workshop separately, without registering for the conference. Or you may register for the workshop and conference together.
photo by
James Bland
Jeanne Guy
Pre-Conference Workshop
2. The Power of Your Story: Rethink, Reframe, Re-Story Your Life
"If you want a better life, it's time to write a better story."
—Jeanne Guy, the Great Self-Proclaimed Re-Story Expert
What would it feel like to explore your life's possibilities, have your story be heard without judgment, and practice deep listening? A Re-Story Circle is a safe structure for such deep conversation, and for generating ideas through writing prompts to "re-story" your life. A Re-Story Circle is a place where you can feel nurtured, supported and empowered—in community.
Re-storying means looking at your life, your story, as it is currently constituted and reframing it. Journal writing is the tool we use to open up a dialogue with your Wise Voice, who could care less about your writing and more about you knowing who you already are.
The Circle Process will help you:
- Create new possibilities
- Remember what's important
- Remember to celebrate your life
- Be a mess
- Do what you can do
- Do what you think you cannot do (credit: Michael Bungay Stanier, Coach)
Jeanne uses Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea's Circle process (The Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair), as the framework for her Re-Story Circles. The Circle is an energetic social container capable of helping a group draw on wellsprings of insight, information and story that inspire collective wisdom and action. Re-Story Circles rely on that social container of collective wisdom, but with the objective of inspiring individual growth through reframing of your life's story using journal writing prompts and deep conversation.
Don't want to live your life by default? Re-story it! Jeanne can't re-story your life, but she knows you can.
Join her as she leads us on an exploration of self-discovery to help us all rethink, reframe and re-story our lives. In addition to participating, writing, sharing and growing, you will also receive free a copy of "Re-Story Circle Guidelines" to help you practice and share this process in your own life with others.
"We are the constant harvesters of our own and each other's lives, what the Quakers call 'listening each other into being.' Through hearing another's stories, and having our stories heard, we see who we are, and who we might be, and how our lives matter."
—Christina Baldwin
You may register for this workshop separately, without registering for the conference. Or you may register for the workshop and conference together.
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