Valley Haggard teaches memoir-writing classes to small groups. Her “Life in Ten Minutes” sessions are popular with older adults. Photo courtesy of Valley Haggard

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It’s difficult for anyone to put the hard truths of their life on paper. But Valley Haggard, a Richmond writer, teacher and mentor to many, seems to have found the formula.

In her “Life in Ten Minutes” class sessions, Haggard teaches writers and non-writers how to share their innermost secrets — from their traumatic experiences to their greatest joys.

“When you tell your story and listen to the stories of others, you realize you are far less alone and far more connected to the human race than you might ever have known,” Haggard told Fifty Plus.

“I believe in the power of writing to heal, empower and transform the lives of people from all walks of life,” she added.

Haggard’s classes, small groups of 10 or so individuals, are intimate enough for students to feel comfortable sharing their work.

Among the people Haggard has taught are incarcerated women, war veterans, victims of sex trafficking, older adults in assisted living, high school students, medical students, gender studies students, yoga teachers, Presbyterian deacons, recovering co-dependents, addicts, alcoholics, budding creatives and entrepreneurs, copywriters, first time writers and librarians.

Her 10-minute writing sessions are short enough to inspire confidence. Writing in bite-sized pieces makes the work less intimidating, and Haggard’s safe, non-judgmental style coaxes new writers to tell their stories.

“To write truth, writers have to surrender their weapons — all of that self-criticism, criticism from others, self-doubt and fear,” she said.

Early writing success

Haggard knew from an early age that she loved writing. While in high school, she attended a creative writing camp for young writers at the University of Virginia and so loved it that she cried when the course was over.

At 17, she was skilled enough to attend a workshop in New York taught by Madeline L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time.

She attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and won their school-wide fiction contest.

She met bestselling author Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues), who advised her to drop out of college and live so she could write from real-world experience.

Although she did finish her degree, Haggard took his advice to heart and then traveled all over the country, working odd jobs such as cabin girl at a dude ranch in Colorado, a hotel maid in Arkansas, and a stewardess on a cruise ship in Alaska.

Long delay, then a return

When Haggard returned to Richmond, life and love took over (she is married and has a son), and the writing stopped.

It wasn’t until years later, when she took a fiction course at VMFA, that writing came back into her life. She formed a writers’ support group of people from her class.

She began writing freelance articles for Style and then, to her delight, was offered the job of book reviewer. During that time, she also was asked to join the board of Richmond’s own James River Writers.

When the Style job ended, Haggard began teaching writing classes. She started Richmond Young Writers in 2009 and worked with young people at Art 180 and the Visual Arts Center.

Later, she launched a website as a platform for her students to share their writing with the public. Her teaching extended to adult classes as well.

Haggard soon started gaining recognition for her work. In 2014, she won a Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts from Richmond Magazine; in 2015, Style Weekly gave her a Women in the Arts Award; and in 2018, the James River Writers gave her the Emyl Jenkins award, reserved for those who “inspire a love of writing and writing education.”

When COVID came along, Haggard switched from in-person classes to Zoom meetings, which expanded her student body to include people outside of Virginia.

To provide a wider audience for her students’ work, she created an online literary magazine, aptly called Lit Mag. In 2020, she launched Unzipped, a quarterly print publication of works by students and teachers.

Books, retreats and workshops

Haggard has published three books: two nonfiction how-to books and a memoir. Halfway House for Writers was her first instruction book on writing, stressing common themes and threads that she has seen repeatedly in her classes.

Haggard’s experiences with her group classes led to the formulation of her second book on writing, Surrender Your Weapons: Writing to Heal. The first rule for writing, she said, is to surrender “weapons” such as judgments, comparisons, perfectionism, insecurity, destructive behavior and self-sabotage.

The title of her memoir, There’s No Accounting for the Strangeness of Things, refers to one of her father’s sayings about life. Published in December 2021, the book consists of a series of short essays she wrote over the years.

In addition to her classes, Haggard offers small retreats, such as the “Porches Writing Retreat” in Nelson County — a long, focused weekend for four writers. She also offers a day retreat at the Ginter Park Garden, “Writing in the Garden.”

She offers workshops for businesses, utilizing the writing process to help build relationships and understanding among teams and spur creativity in employees.

Her business has grown so much that she has added other teachers to her team, including Cindy Cunningham, author of Wild Woman: A Memoir in Pieces, which Haggard edited.

Haggard, a writing teacher for years, still considers herself a student at times. “Every time I sit down to write,” she said, “I am a beginner again.”

See lifein10minutes.com for more information about Haggard’s classes. Her books are available there as well as on Amazon.com and Chop Suey Books.