“The teaching of craft can be done without damage to a writer’s original voice or artistic self-esteem.”
― Pat Schneider (the 4th precept of the AWA Method)
FIRST DRAFT MEMOIR, Autumn 2025, facilitated by SUE REYNOLDS
In 2025-26, Sue will once again be leading bi-weekly First Draft Memoir Workshops at two times – Monday evenings from 6:30 to 9:00 and Tuesday afternoons from 1 – 3:30 Eastern Time. Both workshops start the week of September 16th.
Each workshop size will be limited to 8 participants.
Recent Background
In 2022, Sue took a year off leading the First Draft Memoir Workshops. At that point she’d been leading them for 13 years. Both she and the course needed some rejuvenation.
She spent the next 12 months reading many, many memoirs, taking memoir workshops from other teachers and institutions, and working on her own memoir. She also led two 10 week Mining for Memoir workshops, focusing on shorter memoirs.
In her sabbatical year, many of the workshops she took were a-synchronous, online workshops where the focus was on self-study. Occasionally there would be a live Q&A session where the instructor would gather with colleagues to address issues students were encountering, but most of the work was done privately by her in her own time. She feels she learned a great deal of theory, but ultimately the lack of live, face-to-face time was dis-incentivizing.
Sue was trained by Pat Schneider in 2002 and certified as an AWA affiliate at that time. In the more than 20 years since then, Sue’s belief in and passion for the AWA method in holding safe and generative workshop space has only intensified. Her time in the a-synchronous workshop environments in 2022-23 convinced her that in-workshop writing and strengths-based feedback is essential for doing the emotionally demanding work of writing memoir.
For the academic year of 2023-2024 Sue returned to leading A Novel Approach to Memoir, First Draft with a renewed passion for the art form, and many new resources and new thoughts about the shape that memoirs can take.
That year’s course had a similar structure to previous years’ workshops: bi-weekly workshops with a-synchronous, in-class focus on memoir theory and writers’ craft and lots of time for on-the-spot writing and receiving feedback.
In between, participants also read and looked at published memoirs with a wide range of structures, and those pieces were discussed at the beginning of the workshop each week. This study of other memoirs allowed participants to look at the possibilities for form that memoirs can take.
That new format for the workshop did everything Sue hoped it would do, and she continues to build on that redesign in this coming year.
CURIOUS FOR MORE?
In the summer of 2024, Sue wrote a piece about her philosophy of writing memoir and her work and doing this course. You can read that essay here if you like: A Risky Piece of Writing
ANA to Memoir, 2025-26
Early sessions in the fall will focus on work that “discovers” what wants to be written about from your life and learning some theory about the writing of memoirs in general.
At the same time, we will be looking at published memoirs, focusing in these early workshops on those that are somewhat fragmented / collaged / mosaic-like in structure.
In December we will look at the work you’ve produced so far with an eye to discerning the organic shape your memoir seems to want to take.
Then the six months from January to June will be spent fulfilling the early promise of your work from the first part of the workshop; you’ll be fleshing out the shape your memoir wants to take into a full, first draft manuscript.
There is time to write in each class, as well as time to share what you’ve written and received feedback from your colleagues.
You are asked to submit UP TO 3,000 words to Sue every other week. Once a month (every 2 submissions/6000 words) you will have a private online meeting with Sue. She will have read your two submissions prior to the meeting and you will receive response to your work to date and the two of you will discuss your questions and concerns about your writing process and anything else that has come up in response to your work.
HOW DOES A NOVEL APPROACH HELP YOU WRITE YOUR FIRST DRAFT?
- You meet biweekly online, face to face, in a small group of memoirists who are also writing their first drafts.
- You read and share strengths-based feedback with each other on work written during time together.
- In each of the 20 workshops, a vital aspect of the memoir craft is addressed
- Every two weeks you send Sue up to 3000 words via email.
- Every month you have a meeting with Sue to discuss the work you’ve submitted and the shape your memoir is taking as well as the challenges and victories you’re encountering while doing the work.
- In the weeks between the workshops you’ll read at least a portion of the chosen published memoir for that session, and will discuss what you’ve noticed about the structure and material in the following week’s workshop.
- At the conclusion of the workshop you will have written 60,000 words (or more) and learned the key skills to writing compelling life-based stories.
- You will have joined a community of fellow writers and forged friendships that could last a lifetime.