Teach A Writing Class?

by Jill Amadio

Teach a writing class? I have enough trouble getting myself to work on my next mystery, of which I only have one-third finished. However, I am working full-speed on my new career as a writing coach.

Westport, CT has more than its share of elderly, I was told at the town’s country-club-style senior center where I use their gym. The executive director figured many of the members would love to write their life story if only they knew how.

Interesting, I thought, because I have been looking for a paying job. I’ve written four biographies under my own name and a few as co-author. My greatest contribution to assist another person’s attempt to get their autobiography on the page has been as a ghostwriter. I’ve written 15 for clients. This is the kind of book you can write with no repercussions tied your own fragile persona. No one can take pot shots at you for you putting on the published page swipes or dislike for certain relatives, remembered experiences that showed others as fools, or perhaps an opportunity to lay bare your absolute hatred of your cousin’s prize poodle. I do, however, urge a client’s caution and I try to appeal to their good nature, if they have one.

So, did I want to take up the challenge of teaching some old fogies like myself how to write their memoir? The idea appealed to me. I had never taught anyone anything in my whole life. Well, maybe a few table manners to my kids.   So, yes, I accepted the challenge to help anyone over 65 jot down their life story in presentable and publishable form.

Creating a curriculum was my first worry. What would I teach? The elements of style came immediately to mind. I’d want to know how to structure a book, create my personal style, and how to write down my thoughts and feelings.  I’d want to know how to describe places and people, events and experiences that had made up my world since birth, and was still occupying my psyche both physically and mentally.

For the first class I asked my students to create a Timeline, a list of each year of their life with a significant note, a few words, to mark why it was memorable.

I decided that handouts were important because I had always loved receiving them at writers conferences, so I found Rudy Vallee’s timeline I’d created back in 1989, as well as a champion cowboy’s timeline that chronicled his trek across America from coast to coast on horseback. One handout was a list of 106 descriptive verbs I’ve used for years.

In addition to the Timeline, I also mapped out writing techniques and elements for the following classes. In addition to Structure, Style, and Context I added how to write Characters, Flashbacks, Settings, Cliffhangers, Editing, Beginnings and Endings, Publishing, and Marketing.  I became so enamored of my advice I began to inspect my own WIP and made changes. I dredged up a few tips and notes I’d taken at various conferences and thus was able to flesh out my curriculum.

An observation about the students. They were exreremely keen to learn how to write their memoirs. It was clear some of them had been thinking about writing such a tome for a few years but had no idea how to go about it. By the homework I gave them, i.e. the Timeline, they returned to class time and time again more enthusiastic than ever. I told them to always interrupt me any time with questions, hoping that my fear they’d forget them before the end of class was not apparent.

Among these senior students, limited to 12,  were a school bus driver, a poet, an attorney, an ad saleswoman, a lady from Germany who escaped the Nazis, a couple of teachers, a financier, and an accountant. One gentleman dropped out after lesson #2 because he said now that he was about to describe his life he found it too painful to do so. Another gentleman said he doubted he would continue because as a reporter he was trained to write lean, and that was the antithesis of writing a book. I told him I’d initially experienced the same hesitation when I was first approached about ghostwriting. My editor at the magazine I wrote for said that a CEO had called asking for a referral to a writer for his business book. Before calling him back with a recommendation she sked me if I’d be interested.

“A book? A whole book? No way!” I said.  “I enjoy writing the 3,000-word articles for the magazine but 70,000 words? Forget it.”

“Think of it this way,” the editor said. “Approach each chapter is an article. And the pay is really good.”

“Oh. Okay, I’ll do it.”

After that first book I received many referrals and became a ghostwriter, a few people contacting me through my website, www.ghostwritingpro.com.  One client, a banker, asked me to ghostwrite her novel about a financial fraud.

“Hmm,” I said. “Sounds a bit boring. How about we add a murder to spice it up?”

“Yes! How many murders can we have?”

The publishing of that book inspired me to create my own Tosca Trevant mystery series while I continued to ghostwrite as my main source of income.

Back to my seniors’ class. The atmosphere was informal, friendly, and focused. I showed them several of my memoirs, and said that although we only had eight hours in total with which to cover the subject, at least it would get them started thinking and planning.

By lesson #4 we all felt comfortable with each other reading aloud the homework. One lady was writing her memoir only for her grandchildren and refused to share with us but everyone else was eager for everyone’s critique. The lawyer fella incorporated funny poems into his memoir, and someone else brought us to chuckles with her descriptions of working in a donut shop as a teenager. The German lady brought us to tears with her childhood memories of fleeing the Nazis

That first 8-hour course was popular enough to be repeated, and later in the spring I shall be teaching How to Write a Short Story or Essay. Luckily, when I lived in Laguna Woods, California, several of my stories were published in the community’s anthologies over the years although I can’t remember ever writing an essay. Tips for my seniors, anyone?