We were treated
to an inspiring evening on Monday 11 June – a Lifewriting workshop with Andrea
Samuelson. A former Secretary of Hastings
Writers’ Group, Andrea now teaches Creative Writing at Bexhill College.
Andrea started by defining Lifewriting for
us. It covers autobiography, biography, memoirs, travel writing, journals and
diaries – true stories of people’s lives. We explored why people engage in
Lifewriting – it may be a desire for confession, the wish to inspire others, or
commonly, a form of self-help or therapy – to explore and analyse life
situations we may have found troubling. We also discussed a number of complex
and interesting issues including the fallibility of memory, and how this can
give rise to very different accounts of a situation, the nature of ‘truth’, and
the ethics around revealing personal details of our own and others’ lives.
We then tackled a practical task – a
‘free-writing’ exercise about our sense of smell, then each produced a short written
piece about one particular smell that seemed particularly significant to us.
Given the range of highly individual personalities in the Group, our efforts
ranged widely from a poem about cow dung to a dramatic story about expensive
after-shave!
We all very much enjoyed our session with
Andrea, and were grateful to her for sharing her time and expertise with us.
The Group meets fortnightly at the White Rock Hotel.
If you are interested in joining (there is currently a waiting list), or in
finding out more about our activities, please contact the Membership Secretary,
Amanda Giles, on 01424 442707 or e-mail membership.hwg@gmail.com. You can also
visit our website at www.hastingswriters.co.uk.
Report by Steph Gaunt
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