Muse & the Marketplace 2019

What drives the writer of personal narrative is often an impulse to speak where there has been silence. Early drafts may be guided by intuition, a gravitational pull towards what lies unresolved. And yet sooner or later, the work requires structure.

Far from being strictly architecture, structure is a means to learn more about what possibilities lie hidden in the stories of our lives. This session will address the process of finding a structure that isn’t merely an organizing principle, but rather calls forth theme and stakes, and how considering structure can help the writer crack through to deeper, riskier layers of meaning. Several recently published memoirs will be discussed, and participants will leave with strategies and exercises to help them deepen and re-energize their own work. Our aim will be experimentation and discovery.