The Subject of Your Memoir Cannot Be You:
Shaping Persona and Voice in Personal Narrative - Gregory Martin
This year's memoir workshop was a led by UNM's Greg Martin ( www.unm.edu/~gmartin), writing coach and author of the acclaimed memoir Mountain City. Greg takes pleasure in being a hard taskmaster: he sent us 300 pages of readings, including Stephen Koch's The Modern Library Writer's Workshop, to complete before our arrival. Greg contends that crafting effective literary prose takes far more time than our eight hours of workshop time allows so, instead of having us practice writing exercises, he taught us -- through informal lecture, extensive examples, and discussions -- how to construct our own memoir or fiction pieces, with an emphasis on persona and story design. He demonstrated the method and effectiveness of proceeding through successive drafts, and showed how to effectively critique them. Some participants felt that we should be writing and critiquing during our time together; however, by Sunday afternoon most, if perhaps not all, had come to see undeniable value in Greg's approach. Ten days later, this writer, at least, has reached page 25 of the second draft of a memoir piece, something never before attempted, and he's willing to bet his 4th period planning period that he wasn't the only participant to drive straight home and start writing.
