Don’t worry – the picture is a joke. I won’t saw your writing to pieces, nor measure it with a judgmental eye. But I will challenge set notions and ask questions such as these: Is writing a means of entertaining readers and dressing the self up for public presentation, or is it a means of exploring truth and the self in all its flaws? Might the search for truth be the most deeply entertaining plot of all?

In one of my favorite workshops, which I call “Images that Shimmer: Mining Memory to Make Literature,” I introduce students to examples of powerful, imagistic prose and to the theories of writers such as Joan Didion and Patricia Hampl concerning the power of the image and the link between memory and imagination. By helping students hone in on a single, luminescent image from their own pasts, I encourage them to dive below the plot-driven surface of adventure and into the more meaningful depths of experience. I then introduce a sample drafting and revising process that yields a sensory depiction of the image while exposing its symbolic power.

A workshop, whether it lasts for an hour or a weekend, is too brief a time in which to produce a completed story, essay or poem, but students leave empowered with their ability to tap into and wield the image streams that make prose and poetry meaningful. I have shared this process in workshops around the country, ranging from the University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Festival to the Prairie Voices Series, sponsored by South Dakota’s Humanities Council. Ages of participants have ranged from high school students in Cheyenne, Wyoming to senior citizens in Iowa City’s Elderhostel program.