Class inspires GR seniors to write

Seniors were asked to think about what they would like to write about and possibly pass on to family members.

During a creative writing class at the Golden Hour Senior Center Thursday afternoon, seniors discussed what they would like to write about.

This fairly new class is taught by Michelle Jefferies with Western Wyoming Community College.

"I came prepared to teach fiction, but I wanted to find out what you would like me to teach," Jefferies said.

The class thought about it for a few minutes before answering.

Class participant Kay Danielson was the first to answer. She spoke for a couple of seniors who were unable to attend the class; and said they were specifically interested in memoirs and oral history.

"In writing class we wrote about what you knew. Even in fiction," Danielson said. "We mostly wrote about incidents that happened to us."

Gloria Gulp, another class member, said she had a son who was killed in an accident when he was 23 and she was asked by his wife to tell her granddaughter what her son was like.

Gulp thought about it and discovered it was hard to talk about her son, but she didn't have a problem writing about him. So that's what she decided to do. She wrote a book about him. Mostly short stories about things she remembered him doing. Unfortunately, after Gulp moved, she seemed to misplace the book and she wanted to start it all over again.

Both Gulp and Danielson participated in another writing class the center offered last year. They both thought that writing class was a great benefit to them.

"It was very motivational just to be around others who were writing," Gulp said.

Jefferies said she has taken a couple of memoir writing classes and if that is what the group wants to focus on that is what she will help them with.

She told the class memoirs often track stories people experienced themselves or how their lives changed because of a major historical event. She said almost everyone who was alive at the time of President John F. Kennedy's assassination knew where they were when he was shot. The same is true when President Ronald Reagan was shot and for the tragic events that happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

She said it is important to not only write down how these events impacted ourselves, but about our lives growing up. As time passes, history seems to be forgotten.

"If you don't talk about it. It gets lost," Jefferies said.

Some things that seem normal for people growing up, don't happen when they get older due to inventions and modern technology. Gulp was talking about churning butter and a thrashing machine. She said people don't even know what those are anymore.

Jefferies said the most important thing for class participants to understand is their stories will not be told by anyone else. They need to tell them themselves.

"The difference between a published author and a writer is the author published a book," Jefferies said.