We’ll spend a little time getting to know each other in this first class. This week is about the foundations of our lives – family, ancestry, traditions. What makes us unique; and therefore, uniquely qualified to tell the stories we have to tell? We’ll discuss what mindfulness is and what the personal essay is.

What brings you pleasure? What do you crave? Mindfulness allows you to gain perspective on these urges and helps you write about your history and relationship with all things good and bad for you.

Sometimes we can get stuck in our writing and in our lives. This week we take action. Perhaps you do something you’ve never done before (What’s been stopping you?) Or do something you’ve been postponing or avoiding. Mindfulness helps us focus on the present moment. So, pay attention and take notes!

How do we write about difficult or even traumatic events without upsetting or retraumatizing ourselves? Mindfulness provides us with a structure to help us take care of ourselves when we delve into these memories that allows us to write honestly about our experiences. 

Telling our true stories, maybe even revealing secrets in them, makes for riveting essays. As writers, we need to be fearless. But how do we find our voice when there may be people who don’t want us to tell our stories? Are we writing these stories to heal ourselves or take revenge on others? Mindfulness helps us understand our motivation.

How can our stories connect with other stories, so that they resonate with our audience? Seeing symbols and metaphors in the world around you can inform your personal story so that readers gain a clearer understanding and a stronger connection to your story. There are often more common threads than what first meets the eye! Meditation quiets the mind and allows us to see connections we wouldn’t have noticed with all the noise of the everyday.

This week we revisit our old stories we have told over and over again—stories of our relationships, our identities, or our value, and break them down. We’ll recognize the old patterns and limiting beliefs these narratives reinforce in us and let them go. What would change if we no longer believed them? What would happen if we rewrote them? If we created wholly new ones? With practice, mindfulness can bring our attention to our awareness on a deeply spiritual level.

For our final class, share an essay you want to prepare for publication, and we’ll look at potential markets for submission.

We will practice mindful writing and discuss how the combination of meditation and writing opens us to discovery. You will be invited to practice Mindful Writing everyday of this six-week class and hopefully beyond! Also, we’ll talk about what makes flash different than other forms such as the personal essay or the prose poem. We’ll discuss a published work, meditate, and write in response to a prompt.

Where do our ideas come from? Rather than sitting and waiting to conjure an idea, we can remain open throughout our day and notice. This week we’ll pay attention to the world around us. When something captures our attention, we’ll take notes. We’ll discuss a published work, meditate, and write in response to a prompt.

Often objects can be portals into our past, triggering memories and uncovering unexpected connections. This week we’ll focus our attention on things that hold meaning for us. We’ll discuss a published work, meditate, and write in response to a prompt.

Flash may be brief, but it’s deep too. This is also how we can experience emotions such as loss and grief as well as joy and wonder. How can we get to the heart of the matter in a limited word count? How can mindfulness help us work with difficult emotions? We’ll discuss a published work, meditate, and write in response to a prompt.

Because metaphors can be shorthand for a powerful experience, they suit the flash genre. How can we avoid dead metaphors or cliches? Mindfulness helps us write into a metaphor and discover our unique relationship with it. We’ll discuss a published work, meditate, and write in response to a prompt.

Every word must earn its place in flash. We’ll look at openings and endings and the language we weave in between to make sure we are creating the story we want to tell as vividly and truthfully as possible. We’ll discuss a published work, meditate, and write in response to a prompt.