Ghoul School

Learn to write about death for fun, fame, fortune & forgiveness

Why should the dead have all the fun?

*Obituary Writing for Live Players**, is Obit, DIY’s series of stand-alone workshops

These are designed not only to help you write your obituary, eulogy, etc., but to also help you deepen and develop your relationships with loved ones, your professional life, and your own self.

*credit to Samo Burja for the dead-vs.-live player distinction

1. Better (Written) Selfies: The Rule of Third PoV

Illeism is referring to oneself in the third person. While this might seem narcissistic, it achieves the opposite.

Research shows illeism provides distanced self-reflection, akin to the “overview effect”: what astronauts traveling to the moon experienced when they saw the whole earth for the first time.

This third-person point of view combats rumination and promotes wise reasoning:

Intellectual Humility
Recognition of Change
Consideration of Others’ Perspectives
Search for Compromise and Conflict Resolution

This workshop will also cover the various pragmatic reasons to develop this skill.

2. Eulogy Virtues > Resume Virtues

Our culture encourages and rewards what looks good in a resume, social media bios, etc. Yet, these virtues like ambition, competitiveness, productivity, and workaholism are rarely spoken of at the end of our life, such as when we are eulogized.

So, how do we swim against the cultural current that gives no more than lip service to values like gratitude, kindness, and humility?

In this workshop, you’ll learn how to:

Give to the ego what is the ego’s. So you may then give to the soul what is the soul’s.
Make peace with your younger self, which may have wanted a quite different life.
Begin the rest of your life with your end in mind

3. Advance Obits: **Write about Loved Ones Before They’re Gone**

Major newspapers prepare and maintain obituaries for the still-very-well-living: usually the (very) famous. You can do the same at home.

This workshop teaches you how. Plus:

The writing prompts that elicit empathy and appreciation
Habits to do this bit-by-bit. In the time it takes to Tweet, you can add to an obituary
How to recognize in yourself what you’ve only hitherto seen exaggerated in others