So often nonfiction is framed by trauma, but what’s so wrong with rose-colored glasses…?
Writers often talk about how humor can be used as a tool to tell hard stories, and I believe leaning into the romantic can be too. If you’re applying a romantic lens to your work you might:
- Ask yourself what conventions of the romance genre you can borrow to apply to your life?
- Consider which details you’ll use to build your world for your reader and develop your characters
- Figure out where that line between romanticizing your past and over indulging in fantasy is — this will help you avoid “purple prose” or unintentionally present yourself as an unreliable narrator (it’s important that you come off as “in on the joke”)
Romancing Your Life is a technique for showing your past self (and those that populated your life) some care, tenderness, and grace.
Minda Honey’s (she/her) essays on politics and relationships have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. Her work is featured in “Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger”, “A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South”, and “Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown's Cult Classic.”
She is the editor of Black Joy at Reckon — the newsletter has nearly 60K subscribers. She was the director of the BFA in Creative Writing program at Spalding University, a relationship advice columnist for LEO Weekly in Louisville, Kentucky, and founder of the capsule project, TAUNT, an alt-indie publication for Louisville that elevated the voices of the unaccounted during the height of the pandemic and ended in late 2021. Her debut memoir, THE HEARTBREAK YEARS (Little A, October 2023), is a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.
Minda is such a great teacher! The readings, discussions, and exercises were expertly crafted. Teaching and learning via Zoom isn’t easy, but Minda still created a warm and welcoming classroom feeling, even among a group of socially distanced Zoomers. This class was amazing and I hope to The Porch will offer many many more classes with Minda!
Minda Honey teaches you how to write about life from a place of healing--you become a better writer and a better human.
Minda is super relatable while providing great content. I feel empowered to speak my truth. I think it is also important that she clearly approaches the subject matter through a black femme lens and is unapologetic about it.
