I’ve just come home from the Jericho Writers York Festival of Writing, which was a wonderful three-day event of workshops, speakers, agent one-to-ones, friendship, food and dancing. I was there to lead three memoir workshops on structure, voice and show & tell. I also managed to squeeze in several one-to-one chats with writers who had contacted me in advance – some of whom had asked me to read their work, so we could chat in depth. As always, it was great to be in the room with memoirists. It is so poignant to be entrusted with the stories that people are carrying around inside them ..read more

Thank you to memoirist Grace Olsen for this wonderful guest post. I came across Grace on Twitter and was hugely impressed with her positive attitude towards self-publishing and the success she has had. I asked her if she would share her journey from lockdown writing project to publishing (and great book sales) and she kindly has. I hope you find it useful and inspiring. Grace and I will be doing a Facebook Live event in the autumn, so make sure you’re subscribed to my newsletter to be alerted to that and to send us your questions in advance – or ask them in the comments. The video will be on m ..read more

Earlier this year, I finally got around to reading the memoir Educated by Tara Westover. So many people had recommended it to me. It’s an international bestseller that has been translated into more than 40 languages. It’s won multiple awards. Amazon says: Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old. At sixteen, to escape her father’s radicalism and a violent older brother, Tara left home. What followed was a struggle for self-invention, a journey that ge ..read more

This week I started the first of my new memoir writing groups. The first one was in Herne Bay, where I met with several writers, two of whom I had worked with before. First I gave everyone the opportunity to say why they had come along. And then, as always, I asked people if they were reading memoir. A woman who said she had come because she wants to use words in a visual way explained, apologetically, that she listens to books on Audible. “There’s no need to feel sheepish,” I explained. “Storytelling is an ancient oral tradition and listening to memoir can be, apart from immensely pleasurabl ..read more

Something that I don’t see written or spoken about very much is how it feels to release your story into the wild. Or at least, how authors feel at this crucial stage other than deliriously happy. Whether you’re seeking a large audience, a niche audience on a specific subject, or have written mainly for friends and family, the point where you let your book go can be very emotional. All the experiences you’ve had and your feelings about them, and sometimes your secrets, are going from being inside your head to on paper, where people can see them. I’m writing about this today because i ..read more

My best friend JRo outside the FRIENDS apartment, on our 2017 trip to NYC. (I checked, it’s definitely squib not squid) Some finales are a bit rubbish, aren’t they? I never watched Game Of Thrones but I know some people really had the hump about it. This year, since they put it all on Netflix, I decided to finally watch Seinfeld. The whole shebang. I really loved it. I’m a huge FRIENDS fan. I started watching in the 90s and have seen every episode 40 million times. So I particularly enjoyed spotting all the FRIENDS stories, scenes and characters that were inspired by Seinfeld. If you’re a fan ..read more

I blogged recently about taking (not making) time to write, by attaching the habit of writing to another habit you already have. Good ones and bad ones (!) are fine. You just need to link the habit you want to have to the one you already have. This I am learning from reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’ve also written about your writing space, how it might be imperfect (like mine) but that’s okay. You can still write in it. But now I want to talk about why it can be good, and by good, I mean resulting in a more authentic memoir and healing creative experience, if you take your t ..read more

In my last blog, I wrote about making time to write our memoirs. Or rather, how we can’t actually make time and what we can do instead. But assuming you might be trying mine and James Clear’s advice (and attaching your writing habits to other habits you already have) what about where we write? Is the space in which you write important to you? Social media is full of idyllic writing nooks, beautifully decorated with antique chairs and throws but otherwise uncluttered with amazing views. But are those actually realistic? Not for many of us. A lot of people don’t have en ..read more

This week I heard an extraordinary family history story from a friend via Instagram. I say friend, this is actually the wonderful, patient person who encouraged me in my early days of journalism. But that’s another story. This person, a great writer in their own right, assured me that they are going to make time to write their story. I hear that a lot. “I’m going to make time.” “I must make time.””When I get time.” And in the last two days, I’ve had one email from a lovely gentleman who needs my help because he’s poorly and doesn’t want to “fall off his perch” before he gets his story down. A ..read more

Sometime over Christmas, my husband and I watched the multi-award-winning psychological drama The Lost Daughter. If you’ve seen it, you know. If you haven’t, I urge you to watch it. It is spellbinding. The film stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. The screenplay is based on the fourth book in the Neapolitan quartet series by Italian novelist Elena Ferrante (not her real name). Maggie Gyllenhaal adapted and directed it. Colman, Buckley and Gyllenhaal were all nominated for Oscars. The film is set on the Greek island of Spetses and after we’d recovered from sitting on the edge of o ..read more