I taught writing before I was a writer. Which is kind of like saying I taught swimming before I was a swimmer. I thought I could do it, I could sort of do it, but I was not a practitioner. Fortunately when I was working on a doctorate in English, I took a class with a prof who advocated writing with your classes. You want to know–from the inside–what you’re asking students to do? Do it yourself. Want them to write a poem? Write some poems. Want them to write a story? Write some stories.
Once I started writing, I knew more about what went through a writer’s mind putting down those words, the decisions, the false starts, the dead ends, the breakthroughs, the helpful (and unhelpful) decisions, the satisfactions. For the last twenty years of my teaching I wrote with and for my classes. My goal: for my students to write something they loved. Something that mattered. Something that illuminated their lives, their understanding of who they were. Something that gave them pleasure.
Since retiring from teaching in 2017, my writing has continued. I’ve published four collections of essays, a novel, a memoir, and a micro memoir. Of all of them, I’ve come to realize, micro memoir is the closest to what I taught in college. Lately I’ve come back to that form. In micro memoir you write your life. You tunnel into memory, capturing moments. You bounce from the present to the past, from the past to the present.
The micro memoir page on this website is an invitation. Come and write something you love, something that matters.