Class Title: "Write Your Travel Memoirs" Instructor: Sarah White Class Term: enroll in this class Synopsis Relive the joys and challenges of your travels as you bring home the lessons learned by writing down the stories. Writing about travel allows us to explore many aspects of the writing craft, and also to discover new perspectives on our selves and our lives. Class Description In this class, we will explore writing character and place descriptions, staging scenes, and conveying lessons learned. Students will work on transforming travel memories into polished autobiographical essays, build skills in conveying mood, action, and perspective, and deal ethically with the dilemmas of writing true stories featuring living people. The class will share a collaboration space where each student will have a 'home page' for sharing stories, photos, and other resources. All course handouts will be posted there, as well as links to a wealth of writers' resources. Students may submit up to 4 essays for group critique. In addition to using the group space, the instructor will correspond with each student to provide individual coaching and document review. Each week the instructional portion of the class will take place via a free conference call/class meeting requiring approximately one hour. This call will be recorded; call recordings will be available on the wiki as mp3 files for review. Outline Unit 1: The Outbound Journey: establishing why we write, who we write for, and what we intend to write about. Unit 2: The Traveler and Her Companions. Unit 3: Settings: Where the Stories Live. Unit 4: Staging the Action in Your Anecdotes. Unit 5: Dealing with the "dark stuff." Unit 6: Coming Home. Finding meaning in your travel memories. Join the phone conferences at 7pm CST on Tuesdays. Recordings available after the call. Student Skills, Equipment required Beginning writers welcome. Students should be able to complete assignments using word processing software, including formatting documents as instructed. Students should have access to the Internet and be familiar with web browser controls. During the first class session students will be instructed how to use the group space to submit their assignments, receive their handouts, and review each other's essays. Tuition/Fees for this course SCN members: $0. Non-SCN members: $. Instructor Bio Sarah White has been teaching reminiscence writing workshops since 2004. She typically teaches 3-5 classes each spring, summer, and fall, in 6-week or 8-week formats. Some of her workshops are offered at senior centers, others at libraries. She is looking forward to teaching online while preserving the sense of sharing in a small community through phone conferences. Some of her travel memoirs have been published on Star Thrower, an online project dedicated to autobiographical narrative and funded by the Indiana Humanities Council. For more about Sarah, explore her website.