My UCLA advanced personal non-fiction workshop ended with a potluck at my house yesterday.  It’s amazing how close people get in just six weeks when they’re reading their essays and memoir chapters aloud to each other. (And how terrifying it is to do that the first time.) As D. said yesterday, these people know more about me than my family does.

Everyone in the class is writing memoirs – about divorce, harrowing childhoods, being caregivers, losing parents, wanting babies, not wanting them, their work as an actress, a veterinarian, interviewing the homeless. What’s most amazing is how they have the courage to drop their masks and let us see what their lives are really about.

Good writing and good films show us this – the lives of others.  Most of us are desperate to figure out how to live our lives, how to find meaning and depth and courage, and to know how others do this.

C. S. Lewis said, “We read to know we are not alone.”  Remember that next time you’re at your desk feeling hesitant. Someone out there is waiting to read what you’re writing so they’ll know that they’re not alone.

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Here’s an exercise we did a few weeks ago in class and Ruth got a whole chapter out of it for her memoir.  Write about a time you were dressed inappropriately.  (Ruth did her own take on this and wrote a hilarious piece about what happened when she wore a costume as a kid.) 5 minutes, don’t think, just write.