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Working with your Life Stories

A workshop on writing memoir


facilitated by Dawn Garisch
‘here I am once again,
disguised as myself’
from About Death and Other Things
poem by Aleksandar Ristovic

Writing is a way of getting to know who you are, what you are feeling and how you relate to
people and the planet. Writing memoir focuses this project on the themes or motifs in one’s own
life. We each have a life motif that is more or less unconscious. Yet a distinctive and evolving
pattern binds our journey from birth to death into a whole coherent piece.
We tend to live out of the structure of our egos. We all need an identity in order to function
effectively. Yet the way we see ourselves and our lives is blinkered, and ignores the symbolic
aspects that run through us. Reason, in our culture, is held in higher regard than the non-rational.
In writing memoir, even if extraordinary things have happened in our lives, if we stick to a
rational, logical approach, the writing is likely to be dead on the page. If we write only out of what
we are thinking and what we know, we will never do our best work. In this workshop, we will
identify the central symbols and images that underlie and drive our lives and our creative projects.
We will find ways to quieten the critic and the ego so that undercurrents of non-rational images can
emerge from what James Hillman calls ‘the poetic base of the mind’. We will learn how to make
ourselves available to be in service of that which needs to be written.
Imagination is an extraordinary tool. In this workshop we will reclaim imagination as a
means to release ourselves into awe and creativity, connectedness and purpose, awareness and
pleasure. Through becoming conscious of and engaging with the images that shape our time on
earth, we will engender ways to live a fleshed-out, creative and fully-fledged life, as well as finding
refreshing ways of putting our personal stories down on the page.
Beginner writers are welcome.

Venue: False Bay Rendezvous, Muizenberg

The Fee: R880 for 4 mornings. A deposit of R400 secures your place.

Date: OCTOBER 2010 : Tuesday 19 to Friday 22 October

Times : 9am to 1pm daily

To bring: * Unlined, ring-bound A4 notebook and pen * A cushion and a blanket or rug.
* Teas and coffee provided
* Two objects from your childhood - one that represents something you loved about
it, and one that represents something you disliked about that time. Two objects from
your imagined old age – one that represents something you'd like about it, and the
other representing what you might dislike about that time.

To book: dawn.garisch@gmail.com

Dawn Garisch has had five novels, poetry and adult literacy books published. Her latest
novel, Trespass, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth prize in Africa. She has had a short film
and short play produced, and has written for newspapers, magazines and for television. She has
run workshops on creativity at Dakini, the Mother City Book Fair and The Forge.
Currently she is working on a non-fiction book which examines the two legs of her working
life – writing and doctoring. It explores how science and art perceive the world and the truth, what
the body has to do with this, and how the tools required to develop a creative project are also
essential for living life creatively.
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