Introduction to Autobiographical Writing

Write autobiography

“First of all, thank you very much for taking my course, I hope it will be useful for you from now on. I liked the experience of having worked at Domestika; it has been an even greater challenge than many of the autobiographical texts that I have written, and edited, to this day. The Final Project, I remind you, is called "The least thought day", and what I'm looking for is that you write a text of five pages; no more, and as far as possible no less, where you use the tools of which I spoke to you previously to organize a story of your life from that day that changed everything. The first thing, of course, is to think about what it was. Some examples that come to mind: when you met your partner, when your daughter was born, when a loved one died, when you had to give up your sports career due to injury. Think of a watershed that occurred in one day. You may not have realized it, as was my case. It may be that you did. I divided the course into two types of tools: theoretical and practical. I suggest that, to use them, you go to questions and diagrams that allow you to guide your writing before starting. Remember: it is okay to make any kind of changes on the fly. Question one: what is the center of gravity? Let's say you chose the birth of your daughter as a milestone in your life. What would be the center of gravity then? It would be, depending on the case, maternity or paternity. Let's say you chose, in the opposite way, the passing of a loved one. In that case, the center of gravity could be the duel. This is essential, because it will help you decide which memories can be part of your text or not. Everyone should dialogue, in one way or another, with fatherhood or motherhood, or with mourning. Question two: What literary genre do you want to write? A story? An essay? A fragment of a novel? A hybrid text? You must take into account how you will drink from these literary genres to transform your life into a story. Question three: How much time will elapse in your text? One year? Two months? 25 days? Remember the elements of the narrative. Decide how you would combine them to recreate the passage of time in your story.

Strategy 1: Don't forget to create tension through conflict, and don't forget to think carefully about the questions that will encourage readers to finish reading your text. You must sow questions that you or yourself will answer as you go. Strategy 2: test your memory, do interviews, talk with people who also witnessed your story. Think about whether there are objects that allow you to document your story. Think about whether there is any document that you can use intertextually. To say something, if you remember the exact date, maybe you can go to the newspaper library to remember what the news was that day, or look in your inbox which emails you received or sent on those dates. As you can imagine, the job of the editor is to read every day, most of the time, so my reading time is reduced. I will dedicate at least one day of the week to reading the students' work and giving them some recommendations, but I will only be able to comment on the final projects, and not the other tasks that I recommended you to write. Remember that in some of the final lessons I suggested that you work on writing collectively. I invite you to use the Domestika forums to share your work and read that of your colleagues. Work on criticism in a constructive way. Who knows, maybe one day they can team up to found a magazine or publish an anthology. Write! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final project When it comes to writing creatively nobody has the last word. In my creative writing classes I am usually surprised with the way my students find clever ways to turn my exercises around contributing not only their experiences, but also their creativity. Despite the above, ceo it's worth it that you try to comply with the rules that I propose for your final project. I'll tell you why. I think you should take the final project as a challenge. Challenges serve to channel creativity, to set a more or less clear objective and walk in pursuit of it. Let's recap what the final projec...”

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Course summary for: Introduction to Autobiographical Writing

• Level: Beginner
• 99% positive reviews (156)
• 3512 students
• 4 units
• 14 lessons (1h 52m)
• 1 download

• Category

  Writing

• Areas

  Creativity, Narrative, Non-Fiction Writing, Storytelling, Writing