GROUP TALK BACK: Each of the participants had interesting things to say
about advocacy and the integrity and character needed to be a successful advocate.
Read each of the following quotes from the program. As a group, select the quote
you would like to examine and discuss further.
You cannot write outside yourself. You have to write inside yourself. You have to write out of your own experience. You have to write out of your own feelings. It's the only way it happens. It doesn't happen out of an intellectual exercise.
I think it was Flannery O'Connor who said, "If you've survived childhood you have enough material to write for the rest of your life." It's strange, though, that I think young writers often don't write about their life until much later and that we, as adults, then look back and try to recapture not a memory of childhood but the child's memory, the memory we had at that age and try to write from that point of view.
To find an original writing voice, each writer, (of any age), must write from their own experience, knowledge, and feelings. They learn to select the words that best convey this voice. It takes talent and hard work to develop that voice and the language to express it.
In a small group discuss the topic of "Missed Opportunities." Collectively compile the experience (first hand), knowledge, and feelings that you have around this topic. After this brainstorming session, decide if any of you would be able to write "inside yourself" about this topic.
