Reflection is about more than process. Writers also must reflect on the self.
Memoirs are on the rise, according to Bill Roorbach, author of Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature, and this may just be a great lesson to look into for writers looking to develop expertise in the craft. Perhaps it is not surprising that memoir – a long-form genre – continues to gain in popularity and proliferation concurrent with its short-form technological counterpart – social media.
“Memoir has become the central form of the culture: not only the way stories are told, but the way arguments are put forth, products and properties marketed, ideas floated, acts justified, reputations constructed or salvaged.” - Ben Yagoda, Memoir: A History, 2010
I had the opportunity to take a memoir writing course as part of the graduate program in Rhetoric, Writing, and Digital Media Studies. While studying and practicing the popular genre I found I agreed with Judith Barrington, who said,
“So, memoir is really a kind of hybrid form with elements of both fiction and essay, in which the author’s voice, musing conversationally on a true story, is all important” (2002, p. 22). FYC students should have memoir and personal essay writing opportunities too, in order to practice new strategies to develop a voice, yes, but additionally to look within.
The personal essay is a way to explore one's past and to discover a little about why we think what we think and how we know what we know. The meaning we discover through personal reflection can be pursued further in future writing that we do. What issues do we care enough to write about? How should we frame them? Who knows, until we reflect on the self.
"I just mean that the author speaks as a person rather than as a disembodied voice of knowledge, that the writer speaks from the heart, with no great worries about so-called fairness. That is, the writer speaks honestly, admits that he is there behind the words— complete with prejudices, interests, passions, hatreds, tastes, pet peeves." - Bill Roorbach, 2008, p. 69
Here's a little prompt to get you started (writing teachers can write personal essay reflections, too:)
Question:
What gets in the way of your writing?
My answer:
Things that get in the way of writing. External things: kids, work, school, house, friends, wait no, I gave those up; all the places I have to be all the time which is many and usually involves carting kids and the grocery store and picking up meds for my mother-in-law. Internal things: no good stories, don’t have the words to tell the stories, actually I can tell the stories but not show them, they never would be good enough anyways so what’s the point? Who cares? What if I tell the whole truth and nothing but my truth – almost impossible to do and could hurt or bother others. Who are these others? Who is my audience anyways?
Your turn:
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