Life Sentences: Your Journal and the Creative Life (Adults, 6 Weeks)

“There comes a time,” wrote the late American novelist and short-story writer James Salter, “when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.” But here’s the problem: the great swirl of experience, observation, sensation and imagination from which all our creative work emerges is itself fleeting. “Without a diary, almost everything we do or say or think or feel slips very quickly into oblivion,” warned English novelist Roland Blythe. In this workshop we will examine the almost limitless ways in which writers, artists and other creatives have used private writing to understand their own lives and to leverage their experiences into work. Whether you want to breathe new life into an established journal practice or hope to start a habit of private writing, this workshop will give you both tools and inspiration.