Local classes with Linda Joy Myers are centrally located for Bay Area writers who come from Marin, San Francisco, the Peninsula, and East Bay locations.

For more info about workshops and

classes call (510) 524-3898

or email Linda at:

linda at memoriesandmemoirs dot com

NEW! Write for Publication

Wednesdays 6:45-8:45 | Berkeley, California | Fall 2008 Dates bi-weekly 9-24-08-12-3-08
Price: $295

For more info call: 510-524-3898
linda at memoriesandmemoirs dot com

Are you writing articles, essays, or poems you want to try out on an audience? Perhaps you are working on a chapter of your memoir or a fictional piece, and you need help to shape it for publication. This newly forming group will support you in your work. Each week there will be information about writing skills, publication resources, and information about how to get your work out into the world.

Write Your Family Memoir | 8 Week Online Class
Price: $287 | Includes extra bonuses and phone coaching.

Sign up online and get started right away.
Contact Linda at linda at memoriesandmemoirs dot com

Your story is unique, and you are the only one to tell it. It’s an important legacy for your family and a way to have the last word in your family story!

All family stories have joys and sorrow, coming together and moving apart, birth and death, and so many memories. Your past history is a treasury of historical times, places, and customs—towns, buildings, headlines, clothing, holidays, grandparents, cars, and school days. Falling in love, marriage, births of children, and new family traditions are all stories everyone wants to know more about.

In this course you will learn:

• How to use the timeline tool to discover and organize your stories
• How to write in your own natural style
• How to use scenes and dialogue to improve your story
• The importance of being a narrator, and using creative description to bring your stories to life

Each week:

• You will receive handouts of writing prompts
• Feedback on the stories you submit
• Extra articles, resources and links
• Information about how to complete, edit, and publish your memoir

Bonuses:

• Handouts about publishing resources
• 3 10-minute phone coaching sessions during the course
• Extra reports and articles about memoir writing

Sometimes there are several people in a course at one time, and other times you will receive the benefit of one-on-one coaching.  Feedback is designed to be supportive and keep you writing.

How to Start the Course
This course begins when you are ready—as you may be working individually with Linda. Start now to create your special memoir. Your family will love you for giving them a special gift. You do not have to “be a writer” to write your memoir.

Monthly Write Your Book Workshop 
Price: $380 | Saturday afternoons monthly 2-5 PM

Learn about writing a longer work; editing and choosing your style, voice and focus; how to find an agent, and how to get your book published

New class forming in 2008. Contact Linda to talk about your project.

For more info call: 510-524-3898

linda at memoriesandmemoirs dot com

Writing a book requires skill development and the ability to keep writing through the ups and downs of life. It is a challenge to figure out your writing voice, your writing life, and how to stay accountable to the rigors of writing a long work. There are skill sets that help you to create the work that is alive in your mind, and to bring to the page the characters, events, and lessons that have meaning to you.

The group is selected by Linda Joy through an application process, and meets once a month. Phone consultation is available during the month to check in and encourage your writing process.

In this workshop you can send 30 pages each month for feedback. A synopsis, chapter titles, and overview orient readers during the first class.

You will learn about:
• plot
• theme
• scenes vs. narration
• character development
• grammar
• editing

Writing a publishable memoir is the goal of the workshop.

Each week women of all ages meet to write and talk about stages in women’s lives—childhood memories, careers, love and family, and spiritual quests. The writers use poetry and prose to capture memories and to explore the richness of their lives. We write about important turning points--the lighter, humorous moments along with the dark nights of the soul. There is laughter and a few tears, and most of all the witnessing of our stories, an important component of healing and moving into the future. Women of every age learn from each other's experiences; everyone inspires each other to keep writing insightful and thoughtful true stories.

You will learn how to choose your scenes, how to use fictional tools, and ways to keep the inner critic at bay. We write during class, and share our work in a supportive atmosphere.

In this intermediate-advanced workshop, writers work on pieces during the week and bring 5-10 pages to class. We read aloud and offer supportive and intelligent feedback to help the writer develop the work to the next level. Sometimes writers are in a creative phase where a journaling entry is what was written that week, which is accepted as part of the process. Other times, the writer has developed a draft over time and needs to know if it is ready for publication or submission to contests. Attention is paid not only the skills needed to write a memoir, but also to the healing process that evolves as we write our truths.

This class is often full, but if you are interested please call or email and see if there are appropriate online classes available for you to join, or if a space has opened up.

To Enroll for East Bay Classes

Linda interviews each person seeking to join the memoir circles to help create the right fit for the student and the class.

If you are interested in attending the East Bay classes, please call 510-524-3898 or email linda at memoriesandmemoirs dot com to let Linda know you are interested and to discuss your project and writing interests.

Take the plunge into your writing life. Join our supportive classes to help you travel beyond the critic voices. Invite yourself into freely writing small stories, poems, or vignettes and enjoying the process.

Each week you receive writing tips and encouraging feedback to keep you writing. Even if you want to write a book, you must begin with a sentence, a paragraph, an idea. Each page builds on the next until you have sketched out more stories than you ever imagined.

Testimonials:

“This has been even more healing than therapy,” says one memoir workshop participant.

“Putting my story on the page has helped me see my past more objectively,” says another.

We all have a story. We have carried stories through the generational stream of our families, and now it is our time to write our story. There is no story like yours--it is time to leave your legacy of wisdom.

Everyone IS a story

Naomi Rachel Remen says, “Everyone IS a story.” What is yours?

The Memories and Memoirs method helps you through the steps of writing a memoir, from dreams and ideas to stories and vignettes, all the way to a book. Memories carry deep personal meaning for us. Through exploring them we discover our own unique stories. Story writing can be a deeply transformative process as well. Research has shown that stories can help to heal arthritis, asthma, and chronic fatigue syndrome, among other physical ailments. Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1999 published studies by Dr. James Pennebaker, author of Opening Up, that researched story writing as a way to release pent up emotions and trauma.

Writing a story creates a structure to hold the chaos of feelings and events, and provides you the writer with a narrator-persona to tell the story. This narrator/character duality helps to heal by giving the writer an objective voice to tell the subjective story.

You do not have to identify with being a “writer” to write your story. You just have to have a story to write and the desire to write it.

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The Eight Steps to Writing A Memoir

1. Mining Your Memories; revisiting the corridors of past memories
2. Through Memoir Story Openers you will remember more than you could have imagined, stories that have meaning and resonance that demand to be written
3. The Memory Timeline and Lifelist gives you a structure and visual representation for your memories. You always know where you are going, and can always add new details as you remember more.
4. Linda’s Critic-Censor Keys unlock your words, give you permission to write, and free you to write abundantly.
5. Dark and Light Gateways help you decide if you are ready to write some of the more emotional stories—you choose when, or if, to write the traumatic, sad or “dark” stories, and when to write the happier, “light” stories. This way you are free to keep writing your way into full emotional expression.
6. Sacred Space Contract: This assures that you safeguard your writing from intruders, until or unless you are ready to share it. This is an agreement you make with yourself, but when you work with me, we make it explicit. It is part of feeling safe to write freely, abundantly, and with growing confidence in each new story.
7. Memoir Quilting Circle: When you are ready, you assemble the stories, like quilting blocks, into one document. Voila—you have the first draft of your memoir.
8. Witnessing as Healing: A powerful healing process through being witnessed by others as you write and share your stories.