Open Creative Nonfiction

For Tuesday the 21st, please post the following to the shared googledoc.  For the 23rd, please familiarize yourself with the articles below.

 EXERCISE

You will choose a specific place to write about; this place should be local as you will revisit it each week. Write three pages in the first person point of view, describing where you are. This assignment is due early in week, to give your peers a chance to write critiques of your work. These critiques will be discussed later in the week. Take pictures—we will share them later.

In your 2-3 page piece, address these questions:

• Where are you?  
  
• How did you get there?  Not just "I drove," or "I took the subway" but what events led up to your arrival?
  
• What is distinctive about it—landmarks, crowds, weather?
  
• Get tactile—what does the place feel like?  
  
• What other places in your life does it remind you of?  Follow those memories.  
  

READING

Gretel Ehrlich: A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck by Lightning, Chapter 1.

Honor Moore: “The Bishop’s Daughter.”

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

•  How does memoir differ from other life-writing acts—keeping a diary, for example?

• Consider the memoirs that have received significant attention over the past 10 years.  What do they have in common?  From the memoirs that you’ve read, what binds them together as a genre?

• Who does a story belong to?  To what extent is Honor’s story her own?

• How do Moore and Ehrlich mete out drama?  Which is more successful overall?