Class Title: Guided Autobiography to Get Started Now! Instructor: Dana Curtin Class Term: January 9-March 5, 2012 Note: Conference call to be offered Wednesday mornings at 8am PST, 10am CST, 11am EST. If you wish to take the class but Wednesday mornings are not possible, please contact the instructor for possible alternatives. We are not accepting any more enrollments for Dana's class; the class has started. Synopsis Many of us want to write our life stories, but we don't know where to begin. This guided theme class makes it easy for you to write two pages a week, share that story with your group, and listen respectfully to their stories. Quickly you will have 8 chapters and a new view of your life! Class Description Guided autobiography is a class of up to 7 women who write two pages on their own each week and share in the class by telephone. There will be a yahoo group to support connection and discussion during each week. At the end of the class, students will be able to complete an 8-chapter book of their life stories to offer as a life legacy to children, grandchildren, or for their own personal growth. Students will feel energized, motivated and capable of continuing to write on their own or with fellow students. Each week we will talk by calling in to a conference line and reading our stories, hearing other's stories, and receiving writing tips and encouragement for recording our life stories. Students need to be familiar with e-mail and have an unlimited long distance program (free through skype if desired). Classes will feature support rather than critique, so newbies and experienced writers can feel welcome. Outline Unit 1: Branching Points of Your Life. Students will receive sensitizing questions about the most important times of their lives and will look at the arc of their lives in terms of incidents or changes which formed their life paths. Unit 2: Family. Students will receive sensitizing questions about family, whether birth family, their own families, chosen family, childhood experiences or adult decisions, each woman's ideas about family. Unit 3: The Role of Money in Your Family. Students will receive sensitizing questions about messages around money in childhood, discoveries through adulthood, whatever they see as the role of money in their lives. Unit 4: Life Work and Career. Students will receive sensitizing questions about their life work, whether as a wife and/or mother, working mother, single career woman, volunteer work, what has been meaningful. Unit 5: Sexual Identity/Gender Issues/Feeling Different or Included. Students will receive questions about the role of gender or sexual identity, comfort with being a woman, feminine roles, feeling different or comfortable with personal identity. Unit 6: Spirituality, Concept of Life Spirit. Students will receive questions about what spirituality means to them, if they attend religious services or never go, how ideas have changed childhood to adulthood, how different ideas of spirituality have meaning for individuals, not to be judged but supported as personal choice. Unit 7: A Sense of Home or Place. In our mobile society, some remain in familiar places and feel home, some move and find a sense of home in another person or place. Students receive questions to illuminate or inspire their individual stories. Unit 8: Where Do We Go From Here? Students will write wishes for one another, and write two pages about their own ideas of life or writing following the class. Will you continue sharing your stories with others? Take the 8 chapters and create a small book with photos? Realize that your life is more like other women/ more different than you ever realized? A time to share and find closure for this class. Students will write wishes for one another, and write two pages about their own ideas of life or writing following the class. Will you continue sharing your stories with others? Take the 8 chapters and create a small book with photos? Realize that your life is more like other women/ more different than you ever realized? A time to share and find closure for this class. Student Skills, Equipment, and Time Required Students will enjoy this class most if they are familiar with e-mail and the Internet, can type their stories, and have access to calling into the class each week for two hours. Time Commitment: students should have at least three hours for this class weekly, two hours for the in-class sharing, and one hour for writing your two-page story. Tuition/Fees for this course SCN members: $256. Non-SCN members: $320. Instructor Bio Dana Curtin has been studying, participating in and leading women's life writing groups for the past decade. A credentialed teacher, she switched to training students in desktop publishing and using computers for creativity and connection. She still offers such classes, but focuses now on helping women share the stories of their lives through inperson and online groups. After working with small educational publishers, Dana embraced writing in the non-judgmental methods of Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron. She quickly discovered Susan Wittig Albert, her Writing From Life, and subsequently Story Circle Network. This year she became a certified GAB Instructor using the method developed by Dr. James Birren at USC. She finds the two-pages a week on a guided theme and class structure a very helpful and positive environment for helping people share their life stories. Visit her website.