My Life: The Memoir Craze By Lee Gutkind

Creative Non-fiction Writing. I took this creative non-fiction writing class to sharpen my skills as a writer. It has been fun, and I have learned a lot about the mechanics of writing. We were taught to focus on ourselves as subjects in our papers because everyone has a story to tell that other people would be interested in reading about. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction, and more interesting to read, to-boot. From our book, Keep it real, by Lee Gutkind, the article, “The Memoir Craze” explains that readers are no longer just wanting to read about famous people, but they are also wanting to read about ordinary people’s lives too (Gutkind, 97). Professor White did everything she could to help us as writers by answering questions we had about our writing, explaining assignments, emailing us back if we have any questions, and encouraging us in our efforts so we can become better writers. Professor White was friendly, flexible, and has a great sense of humor. She makes learning fun. The class consisted of workshops every week, allowing other students to read our stories and give us feedback on our writing, with the goal of learning how to improve our work. I have learned to put more details in my stories to make them less confusing, and more interesting to my readers. Writing description
“As I laid on my side, I opened my eyes to tall, wet, grass, with the shadows from the trees enveloping my body.” In my opinion, that paragraph had the best show not tell description I have ever written. I had a note on my paper from one of the students that read this piece, who said, “Where are you?” But I do not agree with that comment because many writers leave people guessing in the first paragraph of their stories, to give the reader a sense of excitement and curiosity, so they will want to keep