One Small, True Thing is an intimate, beginner-friendly workshop designed to help you begin telling your story on the page — one honest moment at a time. Whether you’re new to memoir, curious about personal essay, or simply longing for a place to write from your real life, this small group container will support you every step of the way.

Across eight sessions, we’ll explore how to find the small, true moments that matter — the ones that shimmer, tug at you, or won’t quite let you go. We’ll work on shaping those moments into early drafts, discovering the emotional center of your story, and learning fundamental techniques that make memoir and essay writing come alive.

Each participant will have the chance to share work with the group and receive supportive, constructive feedback from both Tanya and fellow writers. You’ll also have the opportunity to submit a revised piece to Tanya for individualized written feedback.

Come with a moment, memory, or spark you’d like to explore.
Leave with new pages, a deeper understanding of your voice, and the beginnings of a personal story only you can tell.

This eight-week workshop is geared toward the development of a short piece of memoir or personal essay of up to 1500 words. Each class will include discussion of an element of the writer’s craft as well as in-class writing exercises and some sharing. 

During the last two weeks of the workshop, each person will have an opportunity to submit a draft of a short piece for constructive feedback from the group. This course is designed as an introduction to the form for Wild Writers who are interested in developing their work. It can also be a refresher for experienced writers who would like to dive deeper into elements of craft. 

Please plan on one to two hours outside of class each week for writing, reading, and reflection for the first four weeks. During the last two weeks, when we discuss each other’s work, the time requirement may be slightly longer.

Week 1: What Does a Short Memoir or Personal Essay Look Like?
✨We’ll discuss the myriad forms, traditional and non-traditional, that Memoir and Personal Essays can take. We’ll then spend time writing and brainstorming about which aspects of our lives are calling us to deeper exploration.

Week 2: Seven Questions.
✨In this class, we’ll discuss the elements of what makes a story feel satisfying and cohesive. Using the Seven Questions Exercise from Lisa Cron’s book Story Genius, we’ll dive deeper into the heart of the pieces we’re working on in order to identify the central character’s goals and the obstacles they face as they work towards achieving them. 

✨In a memoir or personal essay, the central character is generally a version of ourselves. Thinking of ourselves as a character within the piece can help us gain the necessary distance to define which parts of our lives we want to highlight for the purpose of the story.

Week 3: Zooming In and Out.
✨Our lives contain infinite moments. The story we tell in our memoir or personal essay depends on where we choose to put our focus. Which moments will you zoom in on and which will you leave out? 

✨This week, we’ll do exercises designed to help you decide which specific scenes tell the story you want to tell and which details within those scenes will take the reader most deeply into the experience.

Week 4: Exploring the Lyric Essay.
✨Let’s play around with this mysterious form! The lyric essay allows you to interweave poetry, speculation, and imagination into your personal essay or memoir piece.

Week 5: Who Says?
✨“Dialogue, as much as anything else, reveals the character to the writer, and, ultimately, to the reader,” said Joan Didion. This is just as true in creative non-fiction as it is in fiction. Hearing the specific words your grandmother used when she spoke to you with tenderness or scolded you will bring her to life within the reader’s imagination in a way little else can. This week, we’ll explore effective ways to integrate dialogue into your writing.

Week 6: Writing is Rewriting.
✨You’ve got a first draft, now what? What questions should you ask as you look over your work? How do you determine when it’s finished? We’ll also discuss when to begin and end pieces and scenes for maximum impact.

Week 7: Sharing Our Work.
✨We’ll discuss four writers’ work using the Amherst Writers and Artists Method of discussion, which honors the beauty and integrity of each individual voice.

Week 8: Sharing Our Work.
✨ In our final session, we’ll discuss the work of the remaining four participants and congratulate each other on our completed drafts!

Tanya Shaffer is an award-winning playwright, author, writing teacher and writing coach who splits her time between Ann Arbor, Michigan and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her plays have been produced by major regional theatres such as Berkeley Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks and A Contemporary Theatre and have traveled to over forty cities in the US and Canada. 

She’s the author of the travel memoir, Somebody’s Heart is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa. Her work has appeared on Salon and in more than a dozen anthologies.She publishes the Substack Tanya Shaffer’s Off-Leash Chronicles, in which she writes on topics ranging from creativity to parenting to travel to spirituality. 

An early graduate of the Wild Writing teacher training program, she’s been leading Off-Leash Writing Workshops and Memoir & Fiction Workshops since 2018.