In the anniversary edition of Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes, “My journey began with a series of questions. That’s how all journeys begin. The shape of my journey was a reflection of my own personal answers to those questions. The shape of your journey will be different from mine, but at bottom, our questions will be the same. These are not easy questions by the way. They are merely the biggest and oldest questions of any human life.”
I call those kinds of questions “essential questions,” and I believe they are critically important to memoir writers. In fact, Gilbert credits her essential question--what if my life belonged to me?--with the wild success of her memoir. She believes the book owes its popularity to those millions of readers who “used this story as a permission slip to ask themselves their own questions—often for the first time in their lives.” In this way, Gilbert’s book becomes “the beautiful answer” that asks “the more beautiful question” of its readers.
I want your work to do that too.
In this workshop, I will
I call those kinds of questions “essential questions,” and I believe they are critically important to memoir writers. In fact, Gilbert credits her essential question--what if my life belonged to me?--with the wild success of her memoir. She believes the book owes its popularity to those millions of readers who “used this story as a permission slip to ask themselves their own questions—often for the first time in their lives.” In this way, Gilbert’s book becomes “the beautiful answer” that asks “the more beautiful question” of its readers.
I want your work to do that too.
In this workshop, I will
- Define the essential question
- Explore its connection to depth and archetypal psychology and mythology (my wheelhouse!)
- Enumerate why essential questions are, uh, so essential for memoir writers, including the overarching essential question/s of the memoir as a whole, but also the questions that undergird each chapter or standalone piece
- Offer a list of some universal, archetypal questions that may guide your work
- Provide examples of essential questions from popular memoirs
- Suggest strategies for the placement of essential questions in the text
- Give you time in small groups to brainstorm your essential questions
