What They’re Saying: Workshop Testimonials
We don’t do these workshops for praise or compliments, but knowing we’ve impacted someone’s life is its own reward. This testimonial from a recent Guided Autobiography workshop participant really hit home.“While my expectation was to learn something about the process of telling one’s own story from the POV of a late in life boomer, it became for me an example of & exercise in group trust. Each attendee willingly shared often intimate personal experiences & stories intended, I think, to demonstrate how to fuel a journal, memoir or some sort of leave behind writing project for one’s family. I NEVER saw this coming & consider it a gift and the best aspect of the workshop!
You created a safe space for us all to mine & share our memories & guided us thru the pair of exercises that were, in different respects, all about self reflection and vulnerability.” Richard W.
Dreamshaping: The ‘What If?’ List
By Mark McNease
I’ve used a ‘What If?’ list in my fiction writing, especially when I feel stuck in the journey of a story. Where should it go? Where do I want it to go? How can I imagine the next turn in the road for these characters?
I don’t like to admit that I sometimes find myself unable to tell which direction a story should take, and that includes the story of my life. So when I recently found myself feeling indecisive, even to the point of thinking I couldn’t do much of anything, I wrote a ‘What If?’ list for myself.
WHAT IF I set aside the novel writing for 90 days or so?
WHAT IF I truly opened up that creative space and let something else come into it?
Postcards from the Marketing Department
The back has a QR code. These are for handing out at book festivals, local merchants, here, there and everywhere.
Guided Autobiography 2-hour Workshop Was a Hit
Thanks to the five participants who came to my first two-hour Guided Autobiography introductory workshop! It was a success. They all found it to be profound in some ways, thought-provoking in others, and well worth their time and attention. And I was delighted to see how effective this kind of journaling and personal exploration is, with me as a facilitator. We have liftoff!
One Thing or Another: The Back of the Line Looks Better Every Day
One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.
By Mark McNease
Age has a strange effect on time: the more we have of one, the less we have of the other.
When my mother died twenty-four years ago I told someone that losing our parents meant we were moving closer to the turnstile. Then my father died, and the parents of everyone I knew who was my age or near it. The truth became inescapable that we were next: our siblings, our friends, people we looked up to and people we looked down upon. Everyone, it seems, is destined for the same fate, and it was quickening its pace. Each loss takes us nearer to our own jumping off place, and with the departure of every friend, peer and acquaintance comes the uncomfortable sensation that we really, truly, may be next.
It’s not maudlin to stare at the shortening line and see the rollercoaster coming round the tracks for us. There’s the sense it won’t be long now, and pretty soon—whether it’s a year from now, or ten years, or twenty—I’ll be fastened into the tiny car, have the bar pressed into me and locked for safety, and rocket off into the unknown. It’s a ride we all must take alone. There will be no one seated next to us screaming with delight as we plunge into … wherever it is we go, or don’t go. I’m not personally invested in the next ride, if there is one, or the next. Heaven can definitely wait for me, since I’ve never had any interest in going there. My hope, and belief, is to flicker out, having lived as bravely and as brightly as I could. Beyond that, just drop me back into the ocean, it’s fine with me.