Finish your memoir in 2024: An extended program with Kris Kneen
Are you ready to accept the challenge and prioritise your own work for a change? Or are you a writer with experience in another form who is looking to tell their own story?
Kris Kneen is the award-winning author of memoir—Affection and The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen—and fiction: An Uncertain Grace, Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Wintering, as well as the Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. They have written and directed broadcast documentaries for SBS and ABC Television. Their latest memoir is Fat Girl Dancing.
In this nine-month online workshop series Kris Kneen will lead a small group of writers to work together with the aim of each writer finishing a draft of their memoir. Writers with an existing draft who wish to finish a complete redraft will also get a lot out of this program.
Examining your own unique writing process and putting in place support rails, this Varuna Masterclass will look at different aspects of the memoir writing process, break everything into small, manageable blocks, and work towards setting deadlines and meeting those deadlines with the support of a cohort of writers at a similar stage of their writing process.
We will use the expertise within the group as well as the guidance of some of the greatest and most innovative memoir writers to examine your own work, find the cracks and rework the material until you are happy with the final result.
This is a small group program for 8 participants.
“Kris Kneen [delivered] a high-quality, excellent workshop. So often workshops are mildly interactive, at best, and thinly disguised lectures most often. Kris shared skills of the craft with practice and it was one of the best workshops I've been to in a very long time.” - 2023 Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival workshop participant
HOW TO APPLY
APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.
All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their submission by 1 February.
Entry to this course was by application. Writers will be selected based on the creative potential of their work, commitment to craft, openness to collaborating with your peers, and the balance in the group.
Course fees are $2950 or $2850 for Varuna alumni. Payment terms are negotiable if you cannot pay the whole fee upfront.
Feel free to call 02 4782 5674 or email amy@varuna.com.au to discuss your application.
IMPORTANT DATES
This program will start on Tuesday 5 March, and lessons will be in two-hour blocks, via Zoom. There will be 22 sessions across the year - please note that these vary between being weekly and fortnightly. All program dates are listed below. There is a 3 week break between semesters.
The Zoom sessions will take place on Tuesdays from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (AEST). The writing platform WetInk will be used for sharing work and extended discussion.
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In this course participants will:
Examine your own writing practice and adjust your work plan to suit your personal style.
Meet and get to know other writers at a similar point in their memoir writing process who will become your writing cohort, your support crew and your cheer squad.
Keep regular personal deadlines to help you stay on track to finishing your memoir.
Find new ways to structure and think about your book, and break the work up into smaller, more manageable pieces.
Find a small section of your book to refine as a calling card – an essay, an extract or sample to test in the real world.
Look at alternative methods of telling a personal story. Is the voice of your book the right voice to use? Are there better styles that suit your story?
Explore the beginnings of great memoirs, what catches a reader’s attention and forces them to read on. Are there ways you can find a stronger beginning to your story. Is it a re-ordering or a unique new scene?
Examine your story in the wider context of the world unfolding around the personal events. Look at the microcosm and the macrocosm of your unique story.
Deep dive into character - are the people in your story the right characters for the book? Are you missing key members of your cast? Are you featuring people who do not need a voice in the story.
Save others from harm and explore ways of obscuring identities, using metaphor and fictional methods of presenting the real world. Enact an empathetic approach to writing about people who have had a negative impact on your own life.
Explore how much is too much? We will look at the line between sharing generously and over-sharing. What needs to be saved for your therapist and what needs to be shared with a reader?
Bring what is hidden into the light and examine the areas of your life you are avoiding in your story. Decide if you should be leaning in to that discomfort.
Troubleshoot and identify the problem/s with your book and finding ways to overcome them.
Dig deep by planning and executing a last big push towards a first draft.
Re-write by stepping back from your work and finding ways of rewriting the (not great) first draft.
Finish strong by exploring meaningful endings.
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1 MAKING A PLAN
2 HOW MEMOIRS ARE STRUCTURED
3 FICTION VS MEMOIR
4 HYBRID AND ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES
5 THE BODY IS IMPLICATED
6 TIME – HOW DO WE NAVIGATE TIME
7 CASTING AND PERSPECTIVE – WHO TELLS THE STORY
8 WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
9 BREAKING IT DOWN INTO MANAGEABLE PIECES
10 MICROCOSM - CREATING AN EXCERPT FOR PUBLICATION
11 CHECK IN AND REVISING THE PLAN
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12 THE SITUATION AND THE STORY
13 TRAPS TRICKS AND PITFALLS
14 SHARING AND OVERSHARING
15 THERE ARE NO BADDIES
16 WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT
17 KILLING YOUR DARLINGS
18 INDEX CARD SHUFFLE
19 WORKSHOPPING
20 WORKSHOPPING
21 WORKSHOPPING
22 WORKSHOPPING
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5 March
12 March
26 March
9 April
23 April
7 May
21 May
4 June
18 June
2 July
9 July
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6 August
13 August
27 August
10 September
24 September
8 October
22 October
12 November
19 November
26 November
3 December