After having lived a half-century or more, most people have unique experiences worth sharing. Those experiences may be priceless. 

What would it be worth to you if one day you found writings by or about your great-grandmother? 

The problem is many people dream of writing a personal history about themselves, but never get around to it.  

Some argue they don’t know how to go about it.  Others procrastinate for any number of reasons.  And then there are those who feel their life stories are not worth telling; they would be too boring for anyone to want to read.

Local memoir expert Jan Golden does not want to hear any excuses, especially when it comes to the interesting lives many older women have led.  

So what if they didn’t have interesting careers outside the home? She says they still have wonderful, memorable moments to share with family, friends, other women.  

Jan has introduced "Memoir Writing Workshops" throughout the Tampa Bay area, specifically designed for older women to help them write their life stories.

Her five-week workshop is known as the “Story Circle Network Older Women’s Legacy (OWL)” project.  It is really open to women of any age, who have stories they want to tell, although the vast majority of participants tend to be 50-plus. (See below for details of her St. Petersburg-area workshop.)

Since Jan started her workshops, she has built a record of success in getting older women to write their personal stories. Sure, the fact that her students have made a financial commitment to participate in her workshops is a factor. 

But it is much more than that, according to Sheila McNaughton, who often serves as a co-facilitator at Jan’s workshops and has learned much herself. “Jan’s help has been amazing,” Sheila says.  “She has a unique way of working with people to help them remember special memories, and these can be the smallest things.  For me, for example, thanks to her I was able to recall the significance of a blue sugar bowl that was always on our family’s table. Simply by remembering this bowl helped me to trigger special moments with my family.” 

Jan says she gets people to write and remember days long gone through a series of “prompt” writing exercises, in which she asks women in her workshops to write about a particular event or moment in their lives. 

This could be anything, such as: remembering your first day at school to recalling your first date to reminiscing about a trip in your family’s first car.  “Everybody has a great story to tell. And keep in mind a memoir usually isn’t really a story about one’s entire life, but a ‘slice of life’ in your life.  Your story needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  And in that ending, it should show some kind of transformation that took place in your life to be interesting.” 

Jan brings to her students extensive training when it comes to writing, including in the memoir-writing genre. This includes training through the Story Circle Network, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping women everywhere share the stories of their lives.  

Part of its work includes an online community, providing an avenue for women to connect around the world in an effort to explore one another’s stories.  She has also taken various courses and attended a number of workshops herself preparing herself for her work as a memoir-writing instructor. In addition, Jan has a memoir of her own in the works called the “Unfinished Woman.”

To learn more about Jan Golden and her workshops, please visit her blog: jangoldenstorycircles.blogspot.com.

The next five-week workshop in the St. Petersburg area starts Tuesday, Jan. 10, at two different times: a class from 9 to 11:30 a.m. or from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Both classes will be held at the real estate office of the MCN Group, Inc., 2500 First Ave. N. The cost is $149 for the five-week program, which includes a workbook.   To reserve a seat, interested readers should call Jan Golden at (727) 535-7816.