How to Meld Your Life Experiences into an Inspired Novel

How to Meld Your Life Experiences into an Inspired Novel

Oh, the places I’ve been, the things I’ve done, and the lessons I’ve learned!

If you feel an unyielding need to express what you’ve discovered about beauty, love, and loss, or

perhaps what you’ve learned to be true about joy, adventure, and fear, this workshop is for you. Fiction

offers a perfect avenue for taking the jumble-wild of your lived experience and crafting it into a creative

inspiring story. This course will help you jump off from bubbling unsettled ideas and into formulating

characters, plot, and conflict. By the workshop’s end, you’ll be on your way to writing the book you’ve long

known was in you.

In this workshop, you will:

Get to the essence of why you want to write and what you hope to convey—what it is about

your experiences that make them extraordinary or meaningful for others, and what messages,

ideas, lessons, or feelings, are at the core of your intent.

Consider examples in fiction that illustrate how real-life experiences are used in novels without

the story becoming a memoir or autobiography.

Discuss how to share a message without sounding preachy or manipulative to your readers.

Learn the importance and how-to of weeding out the irrelevant.

Discuss various genres and how to figure out which format might be the best fit for your story.

Explore what characters, plot, and conflict might best work for your book.

Class times

10:30 AM to 4:30 PM with a lunch break 12:30 to 2:00 PM

Harrie Farrow is a novelist, poet, and editor with a background in investigative reporting, feature

writing, and blogging. She brings to her work an eclectic personal history including growing up in the

Virgin Islands, spending her 20s in San Francisco, and owning a fine dining restaurant in the Ozarks. She

has also traveled extensively in Europe and the Caribbean. Harrie has varied experiences with advocacy

and activism, including being arrested several times for civil disobedience in Washington D.C., and is also

a thrice-elected official who represents Eureka Springs in county government.