Flying Lesson #5 ~ Pt. 2

The pros and cons of reading writing to another, resources and handout to support the writer, and a bonus teaching on character development with interview questions

Welcome:

We are back with Laurel Anderson, our brave Flight Schooler from Canada, who will be reading aloud. After, I will respond to her questions and then make the first pass through her pages.

This is a standard workshop technique—reading aloud and getting feedback in real-time—though some teachers prefer to pre-read and then do a more extended, in-depth workshop. I agree with the latter, but with new work, or first draft work, and new writers, especially memoir writers, the former is often better.

Every writer struggles with insecurity and a sense of worth. They ask themselves if they have what it takes to make it as a writer.

But the memoir writer doubles down on these insecurities because she’s writing about her life. There’s no hiding behind fiction here, no sliding behind the implied veil of metaphor or analogy one can use in poetry. This is a “take your clothes off and show the reader your naked butt” art form. 😳

So, after years of teaching, I find it best to have a memoir writer read aloud for a while…a long bit…to grow in comfort and familiarity with herself, her story, and other people in relationship to herself and her story. This reading aloud does many wonderful things (as discussed in the video) but mainly helps to calm the memoir writer’s underlying terror.

Laurel will be reading about thirteen hundred words of the opening of her book For the Love of Monkey, and her questions are as follows:

And after she’s done reading, I direct my answers back to her questions and refer to several books and resources, which I list below.