Before I wrote my first novel, The Star on the Grave, I was an advertising copywriter by profession. But I had always wanted to write something significant. A movie.
In 2008 I decided the time had come to record my …
The writer laid bare
The Grueling Climb of Feedback: A Guest Post by Lindsay Bartels
The biggest struggle for me in writing my first book, the memoir Imogen in Waiting, came after the first draft, when the craft of redrafting began. To do that I felt I needed to expose my story of having …
Memoir – to write or not to write? A Guest Post by Cynthia Banham
A little while back I announced to my writers’ group, surprising us all, that I was done with memoir. Having published two, most recently Mother Shadow, I’d decided that a third –something I’ve been working on since 2020, a …
Writing about people you have unfinished business with: A Guest Post by Julia Lawrinson
‘That must have been cathartic.’ This is the sentence I hear most when I tell people I’ve written a memoir.
Some days, it is true. Putting shape to a life that has been messy, traumatic, bizarre, and entertaining by turns …
ON THE (WRITING) POWER OF RESTRAINT: A GUEST POST BY JOANNE FEDLER
You would think that at this ancient stage of my writing career, working on a rewrite of a book would get easier. Bring Us Home from Sorrow is my seventeenth book, a memoir about losing my mother to ovarian cancer. …
On identity and gatekeeping: A Guest Post by Susan Blumberg-Kason
The moment after I signed with my first literary agent, I immediately went to my website to add those coveted words: “Rep’d by…”. After four years of querying agents for a memoir, I felt I had finally made it into …