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1 4<br />

CKSQ<br />

Writing About<br />

Yourself<br />

The Memoir<br />

Of all the subjects available to you as a writer, the <strong>on</strong>e you know<br />

best is yourself: your past and your present, your thoughts and<br />

your emoti<strong>on</strong>s. Yet its probably the subject you try hardest to<br />

avoid.<br />

Whenever I'm invited to visit a <strong>writing</strong> class in a school or a<br />

college, the first thing I ask the students is: "What are your<br />

problems? What are your c<strong>on</strong>cerns?" Their answer, from Maine<br />

to California, is the same: "We have to write what the teacher<br />

wants." Its a depressing sentence.<br />

"That's the last thing any good teacher wants," I tell them.<br />

"No teacher wants twenty-five copies of the same pers<strong>on</strong>, <strong>writing</strong><br />

about the same topic. What we're all looking for—what we

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