Writing from Lived Experience

Do you have a story from your life you want to share? Are you interested in writing a memoir or personal essay? Or perhaps you want to learn how to draw from your experiences to create interesting fiction?

Over four weekly 2-hour sessions, this online course will introduce you to concepts, techniques and useful exercises for drawing from your own personal experiences to write engaging prose (autobiography, memoir, personal essay, autofiction, fiction).

Each session will involve group discussion around a topic and set readings, as well as responding to a variety of inspiring and relevant writing exercises. *All reading and writing set between sessions is fully optional

All Sessions take place on Wednesday evenings from 6-8pm UK time via Zoom.

Session 1 - The Self as Source

Our experiences can be a continuous font of writing inspiration, but how best to get this inspiration flowing? We’ll use automatic writing, memory, sensory associations, self-portrait and journaling to mine our lives for the raw materials that we will draw from in our writing.

Session 2 - The First Person

When we write as ourselves, the first-person 'I' is still a character with a voice that needs to be honed. We’ll look at developing our personal writing voices, as well as how the first person engages with tense, perspective and interiority.

Session 3 - Fact as Fiction

When does autobiography become autofiction become fiction? Why might we want to fictionalise our real experiences and why might we want to stick to the ‘facts’? Can fictionalising elements of ourselves or our lives actually help us get to the ‘truth’ at the heart of our experiences?

Session 4 - What am I Writing?

Here we consider theme and audience. Who is the reader for our work and why should they be interested? How can we make our own experiences engaging and relevant to someone else? What is our writing really ‘about’ beyond just documenting what we have experienced?

This course aims to be neurodivergent, disabled, chronically ill, and trans* centred.

As standard:

-Sessions include live closed captioning

-Sessions are recorded and shared with course members

-All slideshow and reading materials shared directly with members

-All exercise instructions are written out and given verbally

-No pressure to use mics or cameras - students can choose to use the chat function to communicate with the group

-No pressure to share work. 

-All sessions will have a mid point break, but students are encouraged to eat, drink, stim, move about the room, and take breaks as needed.