by Writing Workshops Staff
A week ago
Every writer who has ever loved and lost faces the same daunting question: How do you write something singular about heartbreak when so much has already been said? For memoirist Minda Honey, the answer is simple. "Voice + honesty = singularity," she says. Your voice as a writer is like a thumbprint. You leave it on everything you write.
Honey is the author of The Heartbreak Years (Little A, 2023), named one of Electric Literature's Best Nonfiction books of the year. Her essays on politics and relationships have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, Harper's Bazaar, and Longreads. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from UC Riverside and formerly directed the BFA in Creative Writing program at Spalding University. She is also the founder of the alt-indie publication TAUNT and the editor of Black Joy at Reckon News.
This May, she brings that depth of experience to How to Write a Heartbreak: Transform Love Lost into Personal Essays, a six-week online workshop at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature. Over the course of six weeks, students will learn to wield humor as a craft tool for disarming readers before going deeper, navigate the "murky" territory of honest writing without crossing their own boundaries, and build a reading practice around writers like Edgar Gomez, Hanif Abdurraqib, Samantha Irby, Brian Doyle, and CJ Hauser. Whether you're writing about a recent breakup or a loss you've carried for years, Minda's class will help you find the voice, honesty, and craft to make that story unmistakably yours.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Minda:
The Interview
Writing Workshops: Your memoir, The Heartbreak Years, is often described as hilarious even while dealing with painful experiences. How do you navigate that balance between humor and vulnerability when writing about heartbreak, and is that something you'll be exploring with students in this workshop?
Minda Honey: I think as writers we must discover what our natural tendencies are and then learn discernment — when should I lean in? When should I pivot? So, I'm generally a funny storyteller. My mind just naturally snaps together these absurd descriptions of a moment. BUT humor is also where I can go to hide, instead of being vulnerable. So I try to wield my humor in my writing in a way that disarms the reader, and then I shift gears to go deeper, more honest once we've built that trust.
Writing Workshops: You pose a really compelling question in the course description: How do you write something singular about your experience when so much has already been said about love and loss? What's your answer to that? What makes a heartbreak essay feel fresh rather than familiar?
Minda Honey: I'll have to think about this a bit more (perhaps a class idea!?), but I think voice + honesty = singularity. Your voice as a writer is like your thumbprint, you leave it on everything you write. And that voice might connect better with certain readers than others — it's like when a mom tells a teen her jeans are nice and she rolls her eyes but her friends say the same thing and she becomes ecstatic. Sometimes, the messenger matters. And I think writing hums at a different frequency when it's honest and vulnerable, and that kind of writing is like a magnet pulling readers in.
"I think writing hums at a different frequency when it's honest and vulnerable, and that kind of writing is like a magnet pulling readers in."
Writing Workshops: The course outline moves from How to Be True in Week 1 to Dealing with the Murky in Week 3. Can you walk us through that progression: how does a writer's relationship to honesty on the page evolve as they go deeper into this material?
Minda Honey: So the very first week, we're looking at what honest writing looks like/feels like and what you gotta be able to push aside internally as a writer to allow yourself to write something real. That's the foundation of memoir and personal essay writing. Now, week 3, "Murky" is functioning in two different ways. Sometimes how you feel or what happened isn't clear and you're literally thinking things through on the page. There are no simple answers here. And those are some of my favorite kinds of essays to read. So how do we pull off murky but avoid being unclear? That's what we're going to get into. The other aspect of murkiness we're going to look at is honest writing that doesn't cross your own boundaries. In the most recent personal essay boom, writing about the most traumatic thing was just kind of what you did to get an essay published. But some folks have regrets! So let's talk about keeping it honest without exploiting yourself and sometimes that means intentionally choosing to be murky in your writing.
Writing Workshops: You draw a sharp distinction between venting to friends and writing for public consumption. At what point in your own process does a personal experience stop being something you're processing privately and start becoming an essay? Is there a moment you recognize it?
Minda Honey: I am terrible at journaling. If I sit down to write about something, it's because I feel like I'm ready to discuss it publicly. Now, that doesn't mean I won't get to the end of the draft and realize I was wrong, very wrong, and actually that story needs to cool down on my hard drive for a bit. I also have a writing group of trusted readers (and my agent!) who would tell me if something isn't ready for the world yet.
Ready to transform your own heartbreak into personal essays that resonate? Learn from a memoirist who has mastered the balance of humor and honesty.
Enroll in How to Write a Heartbreak →Writing Workshops: The reading list for this course spans a wide range of voices: Edgar Gomez, Hanif Abdurraqib, Samantha Irby, Brian Doyle, and CJ Hauser. What do these writers share in how they approach loss, and what can students learn from reading them alongside one another?
Minda Honey: I often get feedback from writers who take my class, that they were introduced to so many new writers to read! I take pride in having a broad ranging reading list. Even though my reading lists are diverse, the writers I assign tend to all be narrative, evocative writers. I crave images and insights that are going to have you up in bed thinking at night. But how these writers achieve that kind of writing is different and by reading them alongside one another, students will see that there's space among the greats for their unique style too.
Writing Workshops: You mention teaching writers how to be "unapologetic but balanced" in their Truth. That feels like it could be the hardest thing to pull off. How do you help a writer find that line, especially when the heartbreak is still relatively recent, or the other person is still in their life?
Minda Honey: Writing about a recent breakup or someone who is still in your life IS HARD. And it might take many drafts and the passing of time to arrive at that balanced place. And that isn't to say that there isn't a place for unapologetic, unbalanced writing — we all love to watch a train wreck! — but my ethics as a writer push me to (most of the time...) show the people who populate my pieces as much grace as I show my past self. I think deciding what we owe others varies from relationship to relationship and from essay to essay.
"My ethics as a writer push me to show the people who populate my pieces as much grace as I show my past self."
Writing Workshops: You've written personal essays, memoir, and cultural criticism, and you teach across several of these forms. For a writer sitting down to write about a past relationship for the first time, how do they decide whether what they have is a personal essay, a memoir excerpt, or something else entirely, and does it matter at the drafting stage?
Minda Honey: I don't think it does. And I often feel like the line between personal essay and memoir — especially now that everyone is all about memoir+ — is often arbitrary. I think memoir as a genre carries a lot of stigma (because it's tied to women) and personal essay gets more elevated. But I rarely consider that line between memoir and personal essay when making my reading lists and I believe most of my work straddles the line between the two genres. It's cinematic like memoir, but has the cultural analysis for a personal essay. As a beginner writer, I recommend just sitting down and writing the thing. Allow it tell you what it wants to be as you go. It might take you some place interesting.
Join Minda's Workshop
Minda's advice to beginning writers says it all: sit down and write the thing. Allow it to tell you what it wants to be. In How to Write a Heartbreak, you'll have six weeks of guided support to do exactly that, with a teacher who knows how to make the painful parts funny, the murky parts clear, and the personal parts universal. If you've been carrying a story about love or loss and wondering how to put it on the page, this is your class.
Six weeks. One heartbreak (or several). A community of writers ready to go there with you.
Save Your Seat in How to Write a Heartbreak →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
