Time in Memoir — A Chronology of Its Own

Saturday, Sept. 16,, 2023
Southern California Writers’ Conference/LA
More Info & Registration

Not every memoir is told in chronological order. In fact, most memoirs move both forward and backward in time, slip-sliding from past to present and back again. The most successful memoirs aren’t simply a recounting of events, but the memoirist’s discovery of the connections among events that were not necessarily sequential and weaving those events into a narrative that reveals a meaning deeper than a mere telling of this happened and then that. Flash back; flash forward; time leaps; “I, then and I, now;” child voice/adult voice; past tense/present tense; reflection/projection; time is fluid in the memoir. In this workshop, we’ll look at the ways a writer controls time to reveal patterns and meaning in telling their story.

This workshop is just one of dozens of workshops, panels, read and critique sessions and speakers scheduled for this weekend conference in Irvine, CA. Find out more here: Southern California Writers’ Conference