Below is a “micro-memoir” or sometimes called “flash-memoir”. The format allows you to take an impactful memory and create a short compelling story or poem. I teach a specific system to make this easy for you. Remember it’s not the size of the work that counts, but rather the impact it makes.
Here’s my Micro-Memoir about hiking in Skokie Valley while I was remembering my life forward and backward in time.
This Thursday I am hosting a LIVE 3-hour workshop this Thursday and would love to have you join me! My process is motivating and informative, so you can flush out a piece of short writing and turn it into gold.
Before The Sky Fell, by Dawn Montefusco
Before cell phones, before reality TV, before Facebook, before Covid-19, before my father died, before I started using Botox, before I knew I had C-PTSD, back when having a cordless phone was considered posh, I was hiking through Skokie Valley in the Canadian Rockies and felt small among the giant rocks and boulders,
Those monsters of granite loomed over me and the Athabasca glacier was still intact.
I was used to feeling big, grew up in The South Bronx, a street kid-honor-student with taped weapons to my boots so I could walk safely to school. I was petite but I was a big girl. Big hair. Big mouth. Big knives with an oversized electromagnetic field. Men were fond of me. Boys ran from me. Girls admired me. Teachers respected me. I had no idea what I was doing.
I didn’t get raped, mugged, or beaten. I managed to stay clean. None of this mattered in the forest of Skokie Valley with the Goliath landscapes, cougars, bears, and turquoise lakes. I was thirty years old and afraid of the wild. I saw a brown bear in the distance and I was terrified of the sounds in the bushes. I felt like a speck of lint in the land of God.
And finally, after a few days, I felt rested. I was finally part of something bigger than me.
It was before binge drinking, before I tried cocaine. It was after LSD and smoking pot, but before suicidal thoughts. It was back when my body was perfect, muscular and firm. It was before I realized real beauty had nothing to do with skin. The flu took me down every year, and then I would feel skinny again. Sickness reduced my belly fat, but then eating turned into bulimia, which came later, but this was before throwing up and after I loved snakes, frogs, and birds.
It was the day I walked with a large stick hitting trees so grizzlies would stay away from us. This was when there was an “us”. This was when I first fell in love. No one would find us if we died out there. There was no GPS, so everyone waited for us to call from a landline to say we were safe.
One day we walked past a steaming mound of bear scat ,which meant the beast was nearby. My then-boyfriend-soon to be fiancé-ex-husband said, “They like us,” to help me from turning back. Grizzlies were not as predictable as gangsters.
He had the ring on him. He was going to ask me to marry that day. I knew I would say yes. I also knew it wouldn’t work. This was before I learned love could not save everything, before I realized I was lying to myself, before his battle of addiction would destroy us. I was young enough to think something would change. I was a girl looking up admiring massiveness, stunned at the majesty of the earth. I stared into the distance. Two huge tectonic plates collided to form mountains, shifting everything beneath.
Let’s Create Together and Write a MICRO-MEMOIR Thursday!
Join me for my LIVE 3-hr workshop on
Thursday 4-23 @ 3pm-6pm PACIFIC
MICRO-MEMOIR: Learn how to take an impactful memory and write a powerful short piece of prose or poetry.
>>>>REGISTER HERE<<<
You could use your micro-memoir time for a blog entry, a poem, or to start your book AND to practice and have fun! I will help you organize your thoughts around one significant memory and teach you how to use great story telling techniques so you walk away with wonderful piece of writing!
I hope you will join us on
Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 3pm-6pm PST/ 6pm-9pm EST
