Contents

Cover

Title Page

Contents

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

How to Use This Book

First-Night Nerves

Beginner’s Mind

Part One: Preparation

1. Mining the Self

2. There Is No Template

3. Content and Process

4. The Oyster Knife

5. Is Writing Therapy?

6. Expectation Management

7. But Am I Any Good?

8. I Want to Do It but Something Is Getting in the Way . . .

9. What Stops Us Writing?

10. Up Close and Personal

11. Deep Blocks

12. Qualities

13. Stop Building Dams!

14. The Memoir Equation

15. My Secret

16. Panic, Privacy and Parking

17. The Death of the Reader

Part Two: Excavation

1. My Tool Bag

2. Daily Writing

3. Emotional Inventory

4. Iceberging

5. Physical Sensory Writing

6. Explore Your Senses

7. Mining for Gold

8. Kindling

9. Voice

10. Ugly Noises

11. Negative Self-Talk

12. Letter Work

13. Two Truths and a Lie

14. Memoir and Truth

15. How Do Memoirs Differ from Real Life?

16. What Makes Someone a Good Storyteller?

17. A Bit of Nuts and Bolts

18. Wrestling the Octopus

19. The Title Game

20. To Plan or Not to Plan

21. The Bin and the Journey

22. To Edit or Not to Edit?

23. The Pact

24. The Death of the Reader: A Different Approach

25. Towards a First Draft

26. A Note on the Hard Stuff

27. Love and Compassion

28. A Working Proposal

29. We’re Nearly Ready. Any Questions?

30. Commitment Pledge

31. The Memoir Equation Revisited

Part Three: Crafting and Editing

1. Fun Things

2. Going Back In

3. The Structural Edit

4. MVP

5. The Line Edit

6. The Polish: Gold Dust and Sparkle

Part Four: Getting Work Done

1. A Room of Your Own?

2. Time and Habit

3. A Note on Drinking

4. When Times are Tough

Epilogue

Further Reading

An Inspiring Addendum

Resources

Acknowledgements

Praise

About the Author

Copyright

Guide

1. Cover

2. Title page

3. Contents

4. Dedication

For all my students; past, present and future.
All power to your elbow.

I hadn’t so much forgot as I couldn’t bring myself to remember.

MAYA ANGELOU

Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.

OVID

Introduction

Dear Writer,

I am so pleased to meet you.

Welcome. Whoever you are and however you got here, I am delighted to see you and am looking forward to telling you everything I know about how to put your life on the page. If I was meeting you in person, I’d want to get to know you a bit and find out what has brought you to me. I will have to speculate. Have you always wanted to write? You might have drawers full of notebooks or have yet to put pen to paper but feel a secret urge. There could be a specific time or incident you want to capture, or perhaps you feel stuck and unable to move on from something horrible that has happened to you and have heard that writing can help. Maybe you want to pen a bestselling memoir that gets turned into an award-winning film, or capture your memories of your childhood so you can print them out for your grandchildren, or make a record of these interesting times we are living through. Perhaps you are used to writing other things – novels, plays, poems, essays, reports – and want to have a crack at a memoir. Or you have nothing but an instinct that it would serve you to get some writing into your life. You might be full of eager desire to get to grips with telling your story, or you may be besieged with doubts. Whatever your truth and whatever your starting point, I am here to help you with all of the above and more. I can’t promise that it will be easy; writing the self is a tricky, slippery business. But I can promise that it is rewarding. Think of it as mental mountain climbing. We wouldn’t expect to be able to climb Everest without training and preparation. We’d accept that we’d have to demonstrate dedication and commitment. This can be a helpful way to think about writing; not that it is a God-given talent and that beautiful words should just flow out of us all in the right order, but that it is something we must practise.

I hope to help you discover the pleasure and solace to be found in regular writing. And, if you want to go further, to encourage you into writing a memoir. It is profoundly satisfying to wrestle a story onto the page. I have never climbed a mountain, but would imagine that standing on the summit feels a little similar to the day you finish your first draft and can print out your manuscript and see the events of your life transformed into a story. There is an astonishing sense of achievement up for grabs if we are bold and dedicated enough to put in the hard graft.

It isn’t always a slog. There can be actual joy in the glorious privacy of the low-tech act of scribbling down how we feel. Being able to use words to commune with ourselves in private is a valuable ally in navigating the world. It is accessible, free and enlightening, and offers respite from the noise and clamour of modern life. So, this is an invitation to join me in the simple yet profound experience of writing the self. Whatever your aim, this book will help you to write about yourself and what has happened to you, will teach you things and encourage you to expand your horizons, and may well make you feel better about your life and able to move forward into the rest of it with more anticipation.

I addressed you as ‘writer’ at the start. Can you accept it? Perhaps you think it is a title you have to earn, that there are various barriers to be surmounted before you arrive. I want you to forget all that. Don’t make your writerliness dependent on external conditions. It’s engaging in the act of writing that makes you a writer, and you don’t need to wait until you’ve produced a certain kind of officially recognized output. If you write, you are a writer.

I grew up wanting to write, but was never encouraged if I expressed that desire to a teacher: ‘Don’t be silly,’ they would say. ‘If you work very hard, you might be able to be a teacher or work in a building society.’ As I got older I lost my childhood enthusiasm, and more and more I allowed myself to be told that people like me couldn’t be a writer, that it was too hard, too difficult to get published, too impossibly out of reach. So although I’d try, I would give up, because when the going got tough I would brood on this negative belief. I didn’t allow myself to use the word until my first book was published. And even then it made me feel a bit sick, like I was making it up, or that it was a brief state that wouldn’t last, and I would have to hand in my badge if I couldn’t finish another book. I didn’t feel worthy. A big energy-draining waste of time, I now think. And unnecessary. I didn’t have to write more books and have people admire them to feel like a writer. I just had to accept it as my calling. What I needed was permission, and I didn’t need to wait for someone else to give it to me. So please, I would suggest the fact that you are reading this is enough proof of your vocation. Think of yourself as a writer. The only qualification you need is desire.

Now, I am big on pointing out that writing requires effort, but it is also the easiest thing in the world to get into because there are no barriers to entry. You need hardly any kit! Consider the investment you’d have to make if you did want to climb a mountain. Or learn to ski, be a potter, make a film or work as a dairy farmer. With writing, you can do it anywhere, and all you need is yourself and a way to capture your words. You can use a pen and paper, a computer, your phone, or even dictate or record as you speak.

It is important to focus on what you do have rather than what you don’t, at this stage. Often people worry that their grammar isn’t good enough, or they don’t have the best computer, or they haven’t read enough books, or they need to go on a course. But you are rich in writerly blessings, I promise you. Because you are reading this, I know you are literate. Imagine it from the perspective of someone who isn’t. I do workshops in prisons, and there are many people there who literally can’t write. My dad, who only learnt to read properly as an adult, still struggles with writing. He can make shopping lists and do crosswords but doesn’t really distinguish between upper- and lower-case letters, and punctuation remains a complete mystery, so he would never feel confident attempting a page made up of sentences. My son, Matt, finds both writing and spelling incredibly hard, and is quick to believe he is stupid because his marks on the page look ugly and messy compared to his classmates’. There are physical impediments too. My friend Charlie had a stroke, which put an end to her beautiful handwriting. If we go back in time, it wasn’t that long ago when most people had to sign with a cross rather than their name. There are parts of the world now where education is hard to come by and reserved for certain sections of the population. So, if you are overcoming barriers to the act of writing then bravo, and if you can do it with ease then take a moment to appreciate yourself for what you can do and what you have. Think how miraculous it is that you can read and write! That you can make shapes on the page that mean something!

Do it now. Take up a pen and write to these prompts.

My name is . . .

I’m reading this book because . . .

I am feeling . . .

I hope that by the end of it I will . . .

You’ve made a start at writing the self. Now we just need to carry on.

How to Use This Book

There are three rules for writing [. . .]

Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I hope this book gives you what you want and what you don’t yet know that you need. I would also like you to have a good time. My desire for you is that you find your path. That might closely align with my way, or have a pinch of it, or be completely different. If I were reading this book, I’d read it all through first – probably in the bath – and then think about what use to make of it, go back and try the exercises, and mark helpful pages. You might prefer to do the exercises as you go. They might make you feel a bit self-conscious. Don’t worry, that’s all part of it. I want you to learn to sit with your discomfort. What I suggest will start you off, but also follow your nose and keep an ear out for your own instincts. It is fine to go off-piste. Trust that all your meanderings will lead somewhere, even if you can’t immediately see where.

Bear in mind that if you were to read this book again in a year’s time, you would find new meanings, and bits that currently don’t do much for you might well make more sense. This is a book you can grow into. The more you write, the more you will form your own views and opinions on what works. The more you write, the more you’ll learn.

I hope it provides a helpful springboard and enables you to branch out on your own. This isn’t a textbook or a course, and I have not tried to be completist or exhaustive, nor even especially definitive. Consider the proverb that if you give a man a fish, you’ve fed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you’ve fed him for a lifetime. I hope I can be an encouraging presence as you fish, but I’m not trying to make you catch and cook your fish my way. I’ll reflect upon my practice and habits so that you can take that knowledge and do with it what you will.

If it doesn’t resonate at all, then put it down and read something else! Or just start writing. My own work feels like 95 per cent struggle with self-doubt, so that is where I put a lot of focus, but there are some writers who think that writer’s block doesn’t exist. It has been said that the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of your trousers to the seat of your chair. I agree, but think the very act of sitting down to write is complex. I have learnt to tame the many and various voices in my head that don’t want me to get in the chair, and am keen to pass on my theories in the hope that they are of use to you. If you want to write but can’t seem to get going, have good ideas but don’t get them on the page, have something you yearn to do yet fail to make progress, then this book should be right up your street.

For me, the challenge of writing is to make time and space to sit quietly, tolerate the terror of the blank page, not succumb to distraction, and just do it.

Simple? Yes. Easy? No. I have had to unpick a lot of stuff to work out how to get myself in the chair, and that is the process we are going to go through together.

First-Night Nerves

It’s not always other people who write books. It’s natural to put authors on a pedestal, especially if, like me, you didn’t grow up surrounded with books at home, but it could be you.

SATHNAM SANGHERA

How are you feeling? One of my favourite things to do is teach residential courses where a group of writers come to the countryside for five or six days of writing. They arrive feeling nervous, jangly, sometimes even nauseous.

This is a familiar feeling when we dare to say that we want to take up space, that we are willing to spend time and money pursuing our dreams. We should feel a little awe. The most helpful advice I’ve ever received about public speaking is that if you don’t feel a sense of anticipation before talking to a hundred strangers, then there is a bit of the psychopath about you. It is the same with writing. It is a big deal. You may well feel a flip in the tummy or a tension in the shoulders at the prospect of decanting yourself onto the page. This is my fifth book and I still experience all that, but the difference is that I have learnt this is part of the process and how to move through it with more ease. Try, if you can, to be compassionate and curious about how you feel.

You could also rebrand any nerves as excitement. One of my students told me her teenage daughter had invented the word ‘nervited’ to describe that odd mixture of anticipation and dread. ‘That’s it,’ I said, ‘we are all a bit nervited. And that’s fine, we just need to hold steady and not bolt.’

Years ago I tried to get into hot yoga, which is gruelling and lasts an hour and a half in a warm room. I never managed to make it a regular practice, but I always remember the advice they gave to newcomers at the start of class: ‘Just stay in the room.’

That’s what we need to do with first-night nerves: just stay in the room.

Honour yourself for being here. What an amazing thing to have picked up this book and be following your instincts to express yourself! That’s magnificent. You could be slumped in front of the TV in consume mode, but instead you are here. Cherish yourself for your desire to make something.

Beginner’s Mind

Trade your cleverness for bewilderment.

RUMI

Try to come at all this with an open and flexible mind, putting to one side what you might have been told before, but also with a sense of conviction that you are engaging with this material in order to learn how to paddle your own canoe.

The most important thing when considering the practice of other writers is not to be put off if their method doesn’t fit with you. I have not always been so wise and would often be derailed if something sounded alien to me. Years ago I heard a writer say that he plotted out his novel using an Excel spreadsheet. I was unhappy at work at the time, partly because I was useless at Excel, and lived in fear that I would press the wrong button and send all the wrong stuff to the wrong places. ‘Oh,’ I thought sadly, ‘if you have to use Excel to write a book, I’ll never be able to do it.’ I would also resentfully and miserably conclude that without an MA I could make no progress. I am still inclined to be envious of other people’s writing environments. ‘Oh,’ I’ll think, as I read about how an author completed their novel, ‘if I had a shed in the garden or was in the woods on my own, or on a residency at a fancy American college, then I’d be able to do more and better work, but as it is . . .’ These days I can catch these thoughts, see them as part of the general mental chatter that distracts me from work, and lovingly reapply my nose to the grindstone.

There are books about writing that I love, but I don’t always love all of them. I might think Chapter Three is life-changing and Chapter Nine is pointless. Writing books that are too focused on structure make me want to cry. Their authors seem to enjoy discussing the classical three-act structure, protagonists and antagonists and all that, but it is just too cold a way to go about things for me, and I know it would never lead to anything good so I have learnt to ignore it. But you might thrill to all that stuff. This is your mission: you need to step your way through all the interesting, conflicting, confusing advice out there and find your own path. Cherry-pick away.

Feel free to doubt and disagree with me! Some bits will click and some won’t. What works for one person might not for another. I will tell you how I do it, but you must not decide that the fact that you don’t like writing first thing in the morning or that you do like working from a plan means you aren’t a writer. I would rather you throw this book across the room in disgust than let anything in it put you off.

So, with complete permission to ignore everything I say, let’s press on.

PART ONE

Preparation

Mining the Self

Let’s imagine ourselves as a mine. My dad was a miner, and I remember him coming home after night shift still dirty with coal dust lodged in his eyelashes. My mum would cook him a fry-up – both supper and breakfast – and he’d talk of everything that had gone wrong: broken drills, floods and gushes of water. Often it was dangerous; he walks with a limp because he was bent out of shape when he was caught between two trains. But he loved it too: the problem solving and the camaraderie, the pieces of crystal he’d find underground.

You had to not rush in, he said. It was always worth eyeing a job up properly. So, the preparation stage is what we are doing now. We are assessing the project, gathering our tools and getting ready to start. Then, excavation! We are going down, mining deep within ourselves. We need to accept that this work may be difficult and perhaps even dangerous. We will have to sink the shaft ourselves. We’ll get muddy and dirty and encounter all sorts of challenges. There won’t be a neat staircase to walk down. We can’t just stroll in and pick up our finished project – a beautiful gold statuette, say – and place it immediately on our mantelpiece. We have to get underground, find the gold – which is tricky as it doesn’t look like gold yet – then bring it up into the light.

Then we assess what we’ve got. We clean and polish it and smelt it into something else.

Finally, we have made something we are pleased with and can think about sharing with other people.

Our finished project might be a shiny, glittery thing that wins prizes, but we won’t get to it unless we give ourselves up with enthusiasm to the dusty, grimy, gritty work of mining the self.

There Is No Template

There isn’t a template or a formula I can give you. We might yearn for a set of instructions but they don’t really exist, and it would be very tedious if they did, as we’d all be writing the same books. I don’t have all the answers and don’t believe that anyone does. Writing is a mysterious, magical beast. I want to share with you what I know, but I remain very open and hopeful that my own understanding is a work in progress. I hope this feels more like a conversation than a set of instructions, an offering of things for you to think about rather than a list of rules.

I did use to think that all I had to do was force myself to sit down and write down everything I knew, but it turns out the process is more organic than that. It probably needs to be. The best memoirs are those in which the writer, in re-examining life events, comes to new conclusions and is a changed person by the end. We do need a bit of momentum. If someone just sat down and wrote everything they knew, it would be a vignette or a still life.

Think of novels that are structured around a main character where a present-day impetus – receiving a letter or hearing someone has died – prompts them to remember a major life experience. The character is always changed by the re-examination, and if they aren’t, the novel falls a bit flat. That’s worth bearing in mind with a memoir. We’re interested in what happened and how it happened, but we also want to know why it still matters.

The difficulty about there being no template is that we can feel lost and adrift in the terror of the blank page. The good thing is that there is no right or wrong way to do it. It’s all up for grabs. There are different approaches to explore and that is what we are going to do. This is an active process in which you are the key player.

Content and Process

We’re here. We want to do the work. Where do we start? What do we need to know?

‘Content and process’ is a term that therapists use. Content is what has happened to us. Process is the attempt to accommodate it. It can be a useful way to think about writing: content is our life events, our raw material; writing is the process we are going to use to represent our experiences on the page. And it can help us to understand what we have in common with our fellow humans and what separates us. Our content is our own story, specific to us. Our process can be learnt from and shared with others. My first book, The Last Act of Love, is mainly content. It is the story of the death of my brother. My next, A Manual for Heartache, is mainly process, because I felt I had learnt a lot about grief and sadness that could be useful to people irrespective of the cause of their sorrow.

Content and process can also be a useful delineation to ensure we look after ourselves as we try to describe our experiences. We must always be deeply respectful of our content, but we can be vigorous and questing in our process.

The Oyster Knife

It is not easy. It is hard to get into the self, to excavate, to rummage around. Have you ever seen someone use an oyster knife? They are sharp and pointed, and need to be wielded with both dexterity and strength to prise between the layers and get the shell open. If you slip, you might cut yourself. Writing can feel like we are taking up an oyster knife and slicing through our most vulnerable flesh. We are disturbing the silt, dredging through the past. Probably some part of us wishes we would stop. Another part is resolute and knows that ultimately it will be good for us if we can exhume whatever we’ve been burying inside.

So how do we deal with this? It can feel cruel and aggressive to do all this digging about. How do we mitigate it? This is the answer: as we grow our commitment and intent, we also turn up the volume on our self-compassion and self-care.

We need to look after ourselves. This will be whatever floats your personal boat. I like time spent with nourishing friends, walking, running, baths, rereading favourite novels, being in nature, cooking and lots of sleep. It’s a healthy list, isn’t it? It hasn’t always been so, but these days I try to make sure that the things that make me feel better in the short term don’t then go on to make me feel worse.

You might ignore this advice, of course. I do that sometimes. I stop going outside and stop looking after myself. I chew the skin around my nails until I am bleeding and it hurts to type. But I no longer get drunk and have trained myself not to fall out with people when my real problem is with my writing. It is a poisonous myth that we should suffer for our art, and I do try – most of the time – to treat myself kindly as I wield the oyster knife.

Is Writing Therapy?

I get asked this a lot and think it is an interesting question. I’ve noted other writers can find it annoying, which perhaps says more about their attitude to therapy than anything else. There isn’t a straightforward answer. It rather depends on what you mean by writing and what you mean by therapy. Going to a dictionary, I find that writing is ‘the activity or skill of writing’ and ‘the activity or occupation of composing text for publication’. Therapy is ‘a treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder’ and therapeutic is ‘having a good effect on the body or mind; contributing to a sense of wellbeing’.

Excavation can be therapeutic because it is cathartic, which means ‘providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions’. It can be really good for us to get what festers inside out of us and onto the page. Editing also has a therapeutic benefit because the act of looking very closely at your words is almost meditative; you accidentally get that level of awareness that therapists encourage where you are watching your thoughts.

Sharing your work is very definitely not therapeutic. It can be stimulating and exhilarating but it is also destabilizing and exhausting, and bear in mind that secretly all we really want to be told is that we are a genius. Anything else can often feel a bit bruising.

I’m plagued with headaches at the moment. I think of Virginia Woolf, who had to stop writing for months at a time. I’m never completely sure, but I do think writing is the cure rather than the cause. I suspect that writing is broadly good for me but that worrying about the quality and what other people will make of it is bad for me. It is also extremely hard work. I find ideas, first lines, first chapters, scribbling down bits of dialogue, to be great fun, but the act of wrestling those initial stirrings into a finished thing that is fit for purpose as a reading experience is tiring. But then I feel great. Like I’ve run a marathon or climbed a mountain. There is no exhilaration like it.

Sometimes people think that it is a case of one or the other. They ask, ‘If I have therapy will I be less likely to write my book?’ I doubt this is true, but anyway I always think that you should put yourself first before your writing project. It feels odd and wrong to try to intentionally stay in a state of distress so you can write about it. Anyway, writing and therapy often take a long time. You could do them together, as I do.

Expectation Management

The odds aren’t great for anyone to be a writer whatever your background is, but you don’t want to discourage people from taking the chance. If I had tried to be a writer and I had failed, it would not be the end of the world. People who love you will discourage you from chasing your dream. It’s not that they don’t believe in you, it’s that they don’t believe that the world will take care of you. People just want you to be safe. I say to my students, ‘Do your very best but also take care of yourself and have back-up.’

TAYARI JONES

I don’t want to drain all our energy with talk about managing expectations, as this can be very deflating, but let’s do it once and get it over with. Yes, getting published is hard. Nobody owes you a book deal. The basic industry problem is one of supply and demand: there are more books than there are people who want to read them.

I like to be encouraging but also feel a duty to be realistic. Very few people can make writing pay the bills, and because our culture focuses on the big earners, people don’t know how little most published writers earn. In my experience, when people find out I’m a writer, they expect me to be far wealthier than I am. By all means invest time and money in your writing, but be careful about expecting a financial return. I think of it like going to the races. Years ago, when I worked at my parents’ pub in Yorkshire, we would often take a trip to Pontefract races. Observing myself and others, I developed a theory that the sanest way to gamble was to enjoy the flutter and expect to lose. The value of the experience was in placing the bet with the bookmaker, having a stake, cheering for your horse, and then saying, ‘Oh well,’ and tearing up the betting slip when it didn’t place. It is a bit the same way with writing. Put in the time and go on courses because you’ll learn new things and have a good time, but don’t rely on a book deal to recoup your investment.

Having said all that, it can be inspiring to remember that many things that became raging successes came out of left field. There is no reason why the next big thing should not be you! Don’t not write something because it doesn’t already exist. You might make it exist.

If you do want to publish your memoir, there has never been a better time. Until quite recently there was an idea that only celebrities or established authors could write about themselves. The advice for ordinary people was to turn your experiences into a novel. Now bookshops are filling up with memoirs written by non-famous people. Non-fiction as a whole contains more personal stories than ever before, while even novelists are being asked to write autobiographical pieces to publicize their fiction.

Try not to think about this too much for now. At an early stage, you will make more progress and have more fun by not fretting about what other people will think of what you write. Travel hopefully, by all means, but it is a shame to put all your eggs in the publication basket. I work best when I attach value to the meaning and purpose of the writing itself.

But Am I Any Good?

Bad art and good art feel remarkably the same, while they’re in progress.

HILARY MANTEL

It is pointless to worry whether the work is any good or whether you are any good. It’s all about learning to tolerate the gap between our aspiration for the finished thing and the current dog’s breakfast that we see before us. With each of my five books I wasted aeons of time fretting about whether it was rubbish and I was useless and would everyone laugh at me and had I bitten off more than I could chew, and why did I not have a proper job with holidays and a pension where I would have colleagues and could enjoy water-cooler moments and wouldn’t feel so terribly and horrendously alone.

It is truly futile to let your mind dwell on these matters. And here is why. Almost all writers exist in a continual vortex of despair and doubt. There is a tendency – I certainly did this – to imagine that published and successful writers feel differently about themselves because they have been blessed with approval. Surely, once rubber-stamped as an official writer, there would no longer be anything to worry about! In my experience, this is far from true. Most writers worry all the time. Before publication we worry about being untalented and that we are wasting our time on something no one will want to read. After publication we worry that we only had one book in us and it is used up, and that, really, we are untalented and are wasting our time on something no one will want to read.

The only thing you can do with this worry is know that you are not alone in experiencing it and give it less airtime. I spent years giving up because I thought I could never be good enough. I couldn’t trust that the ideas and scraps of paper would ever grow into anything solid. One day, listening to a writer on the radio expressing much of what I am saying now, that she was always uncertain about whether her effort would be rewarded, I felt full of rage. ‘Oh, fuck off,’ I told the radio, ‘I bet you always knew.’ Now I imagine people might think the same of me and imagine that I had a secret conviction that it would all work out, but I really didn’t, and I used to think the fact that I was so easily distracted and put off meant I wasn’t talented enough.

People would say things like, ‘If you are really a writer you’ll find a way to do it,’ and I’d think, ‘Maybe I’m not then,’ and that if I was ‘really a writer’ I would find it more enjoyable and easier, and then I’d read what I had, decide it was rubbish and give up.

A sea change came when I had a talk about it with my agent, Jo. We were sitting on a wall outside the London Book Fair, and I was crying because I felt so adrift and miserable and unable to finish the next draft of what would become The Last Act of Love. I told her that I just didn’t think I was good enough. ‘Look,’ she said kindly, ‘self-doubt is intertwined with creativity. I don’t understand why, but all the creative people I know spend a lot of time believing they are useless. You just need to not listen to it. And feel glad you aren’t an actor or a comedian because they have it even worse.’

That was a life-changing moment for me. Jo gave me a cuddle, I dried my tears and I cracked on. And now I know that most writers think they are rubbish a lot of the time. That’s just part of the process. I haven’t got rid of my self-doubt, but I do now know that it is not objective and that the best thing I can do is bring myself back to the page.

So, dear writer, the less time and energy you spend fretting about the quality of your work in progress, the more you will have to give to the work itself.

I Want to Do It but Something Is Getting in the Way . . .

We all want to write – that’s why we’re here – so what stops us? We have a deep urge to express ourselves that fights with the terror of the consequences. The urge is fairly simple. We want to make sense of the world around us. Perhaps we want our experience to be helpful to others. We long to be seen, heard, understood and loved. We might like the idea of being rich and famous, and there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe we want to be a contender, to make a mark, to write something that gives our life meaning and purpose.

The terror is complex, with many different facets, and plays into everything that has ever happened to us, and all our conscious and subconscious fears about ourselves. So we exist in this tug of war state which is highly uncomfortable and uses up all our energy.

I have tried just ignoring the fears but that doesn’t work for me. Even if I can manage them for a short while, they crowd back in and I never feel safe from them. I know that any peace of mind I have is a little fake and fragile. What does work is to confront all those fears full on. We need to hold them up to the light and hope that we will experience the disinfectant of daylight.

Let’s embark on a thorough investigation so we can identify and jump over everything that gets in our way, and can then begin in earnest.

What Stops Us Writing?

Expression is the opposite of depression.

EDITH EGER

I like to do this exercise at the beginning of gathering a group together. We do it as a communal mind map. I stand at the front of the room with a big flip chart and ask everyone to call out all the practical and psychological barriers to getting work done. As time goes on, people forget who said what, and it feels like a shared expression that gets to the heart of everything that comes between us and the page. There can be huge relief in naming our fears; I like the expression ‘name it and tame it’. Not everyone fears all of the things and people are subject to different pressures, but no one is unique in their concerns. It always reassures me to find out that I am not alone.

What will my parents/my kids/my siblings/my ex/the members of my church/my colleagues say?

Is it too boring? Am I too boring?

Who am I to think I have something to say?

I’m afraid of being seen/taking up space/asking for attention.

I don’t have enough time.

Is this financially sensible? Shouldn’t I be spending my time doing something that will definitely earn money?

My story doesn’t even make sense. It’s too chaotic.

No one would want to read it, it’s too unlikely/gloomy/slight.

Too much happens./Not enough happens.

I’ve suffered too much./I haven’t suffered enough.

Something about my identity makes me think I won’t be wanted.

I’m confused!

I’m not qualified.

Other people are much better/more interesting/have more stuff to say than me.

I might be sued.

I haven’t got a room of my own/writing shed/decent computer/nice enough notebook.

I don’t know where to start.

My backache/carpal tunnel syndrome/depression gets in the way.

Maybe I should get a new job or go on a diet instead.

I’ve heard you can’t get published without contacts, so is there any point?

I’ve heard you can’t get published unless you are very beautiful, so is there any point?

I’m too old./I’m too young.

I’m too busy.

Too much time has passed since the event happened.

The laundry! I can never get out from under the laundry.

What if it is crap?

What if I am crap?

Is it just navel-gazing/first-world problems?

My grammar isn’t good enough.

I suffer from inertia/idleness/laziness/lethargy.

I might get lonely.

It takes such a long time.

Maybe I should learn watercolour painting/embroidery/the ukulele instead.

I don’t want to come across as . . .

If I do write it, I’ll then have to share it with someone and they might say it is shit.

Why do I encourage myself and everyone else to get all these fears on the table? It’s a bit risky, but if you don’t get them out they fester. When we regurgitate all the sludgy crap that we carry around in ourselves we can feel a bit lighter. We start to see that some things are fixable and solvable while others need to be worked around.

Do it now. Make your own personal record in the spirit of seeking the disinfectant of daylight. You can do it as a mind map or a list.

How does it feel to get it all out of you? Take a few breaths. Congratulate yourself for doing it, for facing your fears, for being your own knight in shining armour.

Up Close and Personal

Right, let’s have a dig into some of the fears. They exist as a network of poisonous beliefs – some more real than others – that we need to explore. Now they are on the page, we can work out what to do with them. We can also see that they fall into loose categories.

The creative tug of war

This is the desire to express ourselves that runs near simultaneously with the fear that no one will care, or that we might in some way be punished. Of course we worry that we will be judged for what we say and think. It is a primal need to feel accepted by our tribe, and so the notion of speaking out can feel dangerous. There is a part of me – smaller than it used to be but still there – that thinks that if only I would be quiet and stay at home then I would be safe. ‘Shut up!’ it says whenever I do anything. ‘Stop shoving your head up over the parapet! Are you trying to get us killed?’ The danger here is that it is all too possible that all our energy gets used up in fear management and we have none left for the writing itself.

There is something wrong with me:
I’m too much/not enough

Have you noticed that so many of these fears are opposites? Half the room feels too young, the rest feel too old. There are those who worry they have suffered too much, others that their story is too slight. ‘I’m too common,’ ‘I’m too posh,’ ‘I’m too this,’ ‘I’m too that.’ For every person who is insecure about their grammar, there is an academic who fears that they won’t be able to write in an accessible way. From a writing point of view, it is irrelevant whether or not there is any objective truth in your fears about yourself. Just know that this brooding does not serve you. The world is unfair in multitudinous ways, but it is dangerous to our creativity to sit around telling ourselves that our work will be rejected because of who we are.

It is helpful if you can convince yourself that you are master of your own destiny, the captain of your own ship. Be angry if it energizes you, but don’t give external conditions the power to stop you expressing yourself.

Perfectionism

We get so cross with ourselves that we can’t do it perfectly straight away! Our culture tends to over-focus on talent and star quality and under-focus on effort. We expect that if we are talented enough, we’ll be able to sit down and write something really beautiful straight out of the gate. Instead we need to honour ourselves for committing to the process itself, so that we can learn more and get better and value the meaning and purpose of the experience, rather than being obsessed with the end product. It does take a long time. We expect musicians to practise, actors to rehearse, and sportspeople to train. We need to find that level of commitment too, and not waste our energy on being angry with ourselves that we can’t just effortlessly produce 50,000 perfectly written words all in the right order by next Tuesday.

Confusion about the story itself and our ability to tell it

The magnitude of it can feel overwhelming. We have so many questions and not enough answers. We don’t know where to start, and then we have no idea what the middle is, and not a clue how to end. And we’ve read that every story needs a beginning, middle and end, so we know we need to work that stuff out. Well, not only must we endure not having all the answers from the outset, but this probably isn’t possible or desirable either, as it is the act of writing itself that dislodges memory and engenders meaning. It is only by writing about something that I truly discover what I think about it. It is an organic process. One memory will lead to another and another, and I will start to see patterns. Often I don’t know why I am preoccupied with something or why two seemingly separate events are fusing themselves in my mind. If I am patient and diligent and can sit with my confusion, then meaning will float up. The subconscious moves in ways I can’t begin to understand, but if we have the courage to explore we are often rewarded. We all dislike confusion and crave certainty, but it helps if we can see confusion as the gateway to understanding.

But don’t I need a plan before I start writing?

If you read advice about writing on the internet, it largely suggests you create a synopsis and then a chapter outline and then write your book by filling in the blanks. I don’t know any memoirist who has been able to take this approach. Rather, what happens is that we feel very confused, sit around gurning and possibly weeping for a long time, then splurge on the page and then edit it. A lot. And then, finally, at that late stage we know, more or less, what it is about. Maybe. Again, it is the act of writing itself that brings meaning.

The ‘Uncle Bob’ problem

What will our family, friends, neighbours and colleagues think if we manage to get our story out into the world? Will we be accused of betraying family secrets? How will we handle encroaching on the privacy of others? This is a real issue that will need thought for everyone, and considerable thought for anyone where there is potential conflict, but we need to park it at this point. The main threat of this worry is that it stops us doing anything at all. An awful lot of books don’t exist, not because the problems of how to represent the real people involved were insurmountable, but because the authors themselves thought they were and so never wrote the book in the first place.

You lazy bastard!

I think laziness is actually all about procrastination and fear. I have worked with lots of people who berate themselves for laziness when what they are is frightened, overwhelmed, and unable to manage the unpleasant voices in their own head.

The temptation of false possibility

Ah, the lure of my imaginary ukulele. Should I be doing something else? Would I really be painting with watercolours if I wasn’t writing? Probably not. I’d just be sitting around with all that stuff still swirling inside me. And there is nothing stopping me from painting or playing an instrument. I just don’t get around to doing it.

Compare and despair

Try not to succumb to compare and despair. The evils of comparison are as old as time and have been given a lethal injection of modern energy by social media. It is incredibly easy to start negatively comparing ourselves to other people. Writers do it all the time, and it’s poisonous and pointless. It really is irrelevant what seeming attributes other people possess. Dwelling on feelings of insecurity only makes it more difficult for us to do the work of finding our own voice. I spent a long time not writing books because I’d never be able to do it as well as Julian Barnes or Hilary Mantel. Eventually I clocked that I didn’t have to sound like them, I only had to sound like myself. These days, if I spend too much time on the internet, I very quickly start fretting that I am old and past it and redundant, and should just get out of the way. So I have to turn it off and come back to the page.

Scarcity thinking

‘I don’t have the time, conditions or health that I need.’ Some of this is real but we are inclined to use it as an excuse. ‘I can’t start until I’ve saved enough money for a new computer.’ ‘I can’t start until I have a whole week off work.’ ‘I can’t start until I’ve asked the doctor for HRT.’ ‘I can’t start until I’ve brushed up on my skills.’ The number of highly literate people I meet who think they need to improve their grammar! Waste no time worrying about apostrophes at this stage. The trick is putting your efforts into working out what you do have and what you can do, rather than moping about what you lack.

It happened too long ago

One of my favourite writers, Elizabeth Jane Howard, often used herself as a source in her novels, which can easily be seen by cross-referencing them with her memoir Slipstream. She said, ‘You lay the autobiographical stuff down like wine.’ This is a more elegant way of expressing what I think of as ‘composting’. We are the way we are because of what has happened to us, but often those events need time to mature and develop – and so do we. There is no rule about how much time has to pass before experience matures into something we can write about. Whatever time has elapsed, try to look on the bright side about it. Memoirs written very soon after the event can have a vibrant immediacy. Memoirs written later often have a depth that comes from the passing of time and are enriched by reflections on the nature of memory. And don’t worry if your memory feels incomplete or fragmented. Time and memory do go haywire in a time of trauma. There are plenty of ways to deal with this on the page.

I don’t want to come across as . . .

I think every single writer I’ve worked with has said this to me at some point. ‘I don’t want to come across as arrogant/unfeeling/unaware of my various privileges/self-pitying/too much of a know-all/callous/obsessed with my kids/obsessed with my work/obsessed with myself.’ We could go on and on. We’ll look at this more later on, but for now let me tell you that this isn’t a first-draft problem – don’t let all these fears about how you might ultimately be perceived stop you from laying down some words.

Myths

Vast amounts of stuff about publishing on the internet is nonsense and often written by people who are upset about the trajectory of their own creative careers. There is an idea that circulates that you need to be attractive. With all respect to my fellow writers, we do not tend to be an especially beautiful or well-groomed bunch. I doubt there is another profession where it matters less what you look like and how peculiar you are. The media cares more than publishing does, and it is true that if you happen to be very physically appealing or striking then you are more likely to end up having your photograph taken a lot. I say again, the world doesn’t owe you a book deal. Publication isn’t a qualification that you can work towards in definable steps. It is not easy to be published but there is no reason why it shouldn’t be you, and you won’t know unless you try, so don’t tell yourself stories about being too young/old/unattractive or that there is anything wrong about you.

There is an idea that only one thing can go well at a time – either we are happy in love or fulfilled in a career or enjoying our creativity – but I don’t think that is true either. Yes, we have to decide where to put our attention and focus, but I would challenge the idea that we must always be sacrificing one thing to get something else that we want.

The critical voice

Perhaps you have a voice in your head telling you all the reasons why writing is not a good idea. Or lots! Writer and therapist Julia Samuel refers to this mental chorus as ‘the shitty committee’. The voices in my head berate me for being lazy and stupid. They always want me to stop working. They like to focus on the impossibility of me ever getting anything done – maybe I’ll get ill or go mad – and say that even if I do get anything down, it will be crap and I will lack the stamina and will to make it better. And then even if I manage that, and it does get out into the world, I will not cope when everyone tells me what rubbish it is. So why not just go and have a nap? Why bother with all the work as no good will come of it?

My friend Claire, a therapist, says it can be helpful to know that the critical voice often has its roots in the past and was formed with the intention of protecting us. Perhaps mine is trying to keep me safe. It really wants me to stop exposing myself. ‘Stop standing up,’ it says. ‘Stop calling attention to yourself! Who do you think you are?’ It will do anything to stop me.

Sometimes external voices become internal. I think I can trace some of this to growing up in Yorkshire, where the main aim was not to ‘show yourself up’. I was always encouraged by my parents, so the outside world could be a shock. ‘She’s full of herself’ was not a compliment.

Do you have a critical voice and what does it say? Being curious about it or getting to know it can help. Writing it down can lessen the sting. Put ‘What do you want?’ at the top of the page and just let your hand move. If you find out its motivation you can offer some reassurance. Often the voice is trying to protect a younger version of ourselves, or save us from something from which we no longer need to be saved. If we know its intention, we can say, ‘Thank you. My today self no longer needs you to protect me.’ Or you can say, ‘I know you are trying to help, but when you hit me over the head with a stick and tell me I’m rubbish, it paralyses me and then I can’t get stuff done, so could you be a bit nicer?’ Or you can imagine yourself locating the volume switch in your head and turning it down. And there are moments when the most helpful thing to do is tell it to shut up!

While I can’t eradicate my self-doubt, over time I have turned it from a monkey jabbering in my ear to a lovely old Labrador sleeping at my feet. The only way through is to write. Action cures fear. Maybe no one will want to read your book, but how will you know unless you write it?

Deep Blocks

I’m with a group of writing students at Kestle Barton, a beautiful ancient homestead just above Frenchman’s Creek in Cornwall, in a room called the apple store, a converted barn up an exterior stone staircase. We are exploring the way we can accumulate unhelpful beliefs without even realizing it and how they can stew inside us, holding us back.

‘I’ll give you a non-writing example,’ I say, and explain how when I had my son Matt he was two weeks late, so they induced him and it all ended in an emergency caesarean. When I was lying in my bed afterwards, off my head on drugs, a doctor came to see me.

‘I hope you’re not feeling bad that you didn’t have a natural birth,’ he said. ‘There’s no way that baby was ever getting out of you vaginally. You’ve got a narrow pelvis. In days gone by you’d have died.’

I think the doctor was trying to cheer me up, but what I took from the exchange was that trying to give birth without the benefits of modern medicine would kill me. Because I have an overactive imagination, I always think an apocalypse is just around the corner, so I decided – not at all consciously – that I needed to stay safe to look after Matt, and couldn’t risk another baby in case I was somehow unable to get to a hospital, because then I’d die and leave him all alone.

Everyone is nodding. One of the group, Louise, shares that her mother was trying to write a book when she died. Louise says that rationally she knows writing her book won’t kill her, but that somewhere in her head she has fused these facts and thinks it is dangerous. More nods. Someone else says that they have always felt they mustn’t take too much on, as their mother always said that it was being too busy that caused their father’s heart attack.

Someone asks if I think having a child has helped or hindered my writing.

‘Interesting question,’ I say. ‘He was a great catalyst for The Last Act of Love. I wanted to psychologically spring clean myself for him. But as he gets older, I worry that he might be upset or affected by something. What if I write about the complexities of parenthood, how I feel my identity has been eroded, how bored I often am, and how uncomfortable it is to love him so much but not always want to be at his beck and call, and then I get squashed by a bus and all my ingratitude is on record?’

Kind faces look back at me. I feel better, a bit lighter. I’ve said it – confessed how much I struggle with the maternal cocktail of love, duty and boredom – and the world hasn’t ended. I feel a weight lift. It seems funny. And outdated. I can see that I didn’t want to take that risk when Matt was little and might potentially not have memories of the real me, but now? I can even imagine explaining it to him. It wouldn’t come as a huge shock to him that I prefer talking about writing to helping him tidy his bedroom. I can see him giving me a look: ‘Don’t worry, Mum. I know you’d rather be having writerly chats than playing. I can live with that.’

Something else bubbles up; my lip wobbles, I hesitate. I’m in full flow now. I could be professional and reverse out of exploring uncharted territory in front of others, but I trust my students and myself so I dive in: ‘When I was running a literacy charity, there was a man whose story had been included in a collection of inspiring case studies who wanted all mention of himself to be removed.’ My voice cracks. ‘He’d shared his story of learning to read in prison. He was proud at the time, but now his son was being bullied at school because the other pupils had googled him and found the article.’

I pause. I remember the sadness of being on the phone with him as he explained. My tummy is flipping over. ‘I’ve only just realized this, but I think in the midst of trying to help that man, I took on board that children could be harmed by their parents’ stories, and as Matt gets older, I imagine him being taunted because of something I’ve done.’

There is a silence in the room. I’m not the only one whose eyes have filled up with tears. We all feel the burden of love.

‘Is it likely?’ someone asks. ‘That poor man. But is it likely that would happen to Matt?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say slowly. ‘Probably not.’

The sun is shining through the window. This has been a literal demonstration of the disinfectant of daylight.

‘It certainly feels liberating to twig that I can stop putting myself in the power of some long-ago bullies.’

And we carry on discussing how life is indeed full of risks and our minds are designed to seek them out so we can mitigate them, but how the biggest risk is that the fear of possible consequences stops us taking action.

What might your deep blocks be? In writing and in life? Can you identify them kindly, write about them and seek the disinfectant of daylight?

You could use this prompt: ‘Deep down, what really frightens me is . . .’

Qualities

We’ve faced our fears! We have hopefully abandoned our desire to live in a perfect world, to be flawless human beings, and to have immediate answers to all our worries. Or at least we’ve identified some blockers and are feeling less alone. What I hope we can learn is that our fears are not unique and specific to us, and identifying them will free us up to start getting words on the page.

So, we’ve looked at what might trip us up – now let’s look at what will serve us.

Commitment

Curiosity

Observation

Perception

Tenacity

Resilience

Being able to stay still and spend time alone

Managing temptation

Managing perfectionism

Self-discipline

Focus

An open mind

An open heart

Playfulness

Imagination

Privacy

It helps if we can find pleasure in engaging with the process. Can we hold still with the confusion of not knowing? Think: ‘Isn’t it exciting that I’m trying to learn something new?’ rather than ‘Why am I so stupid that I’m not better at this?’ Let’s imagine ourselves as a lovely chubby baby trying to stand for the first time, or a beautiful wide-eyed foal taking first steps on wobbly legs.

It is always easier to do something else than to write, and the modern world has myriad calls on our attention. We are as free as our ability to master temptation and distraction.

I aim to be compassionate and forgiving of my words but regimented and disciplined with my commitment.

I haven’t included self-belief in this list because lots of writers I know have hardly any. It is worth trying to cultivate it if you can. Joy is a tricky one too, but the more you can sit with your dark emotions, the more you can access joy. Are there any more you want to add?

Work on these. Grow them. Meditate upon them. Write them out – the ones that resonate – and add your own as a mind map or a list in different colours on pretty paper, and stick them above your desk or into your notebook. They are what you need.

And the prize is huge! Writing is like being in a room with a wardrobe that has the power to transport you to endless other worlds. The act of writing is what unlocks the door. If you are fidgety and restless and keep going off to the kitchen for snacks, the door will stay shut. The people who inhabit those worlds are shy too, and they won’t come out if you are looking at your phone or listening to news on the radio. Why would they want to? You need to sit and write, that is all, and then you will be able to open the door.

Stop Building Dams!

An idea, an inspiration, a wispy joyous thing of interest occurs or arrives. We have fun with it, maybe write something down in our notebook, but then almost straight away we allow ourselves to be distracted by questions and issues. ‘Oh, but that story is about my marriage and I thought I was writing a book about my childhood.’ ‘Oh, that’s too dark or too slight, that would be too depressing/trivial for anyone to want to read about.’ Or, ‘But I can’t see how that fits into the other work I’ve done. I don’t know where I would put it.’ Even, ‘Shall I write it in my diary or shall I record it in that new dictation app I’ve got?’

Almost as soon as we have the urge to express ourselves, we are besieged with worry and doubt that act as a block. We allow our minds to get tangled up with all the hows and whys and do you mind if I don’ts, and we lose that beautiful impulse. What we need to do is stop damning our flow.

The Memoir Equation

You + your experience = story

Trust in the uniqueness of this. Just as no fingerprint is the same, no story is the same, and it is in that conjunction – the person you are with the things you have witnessed – that the magic lies.

My Secret

Let me tell you a secret about my writing. I have wanted to write books for as long as I knew what one was. I have spent my whole life immersed in books and reading. I make sacrifices for writing. I stay home when I would rather be out. I got sober because I knew I couldn’t write with booze sloshing around in me. It is a compulsion and I put it first. But despite all that desire, I would pretty much always rather do something else. It would always be easier to stay in bed and reread Georgette Heyer and eat sweets. I like having written more than I like writing. Life has been easier since I’ve accepted that I’m never going to feel like it.

Starting is the problem. And then sticking with it. If I do those two things then enjoyment comes. But I have to think hard about how to do those two things. I have to be intentional. Inclination is not enough in this world that is so tempting and full of distractions. I have to corral myself to get anything done or else I behave like a demented magpie dazzled by the lure of shiny things.

The big thing about this is accepting it, and not thinking that if only I were talented or clever enough it would all be easy. If I accept that my creative endeavours require sustained effort, then I can commit and subsequently find enjoyment and satisfaction in the work. Writing is like an intellectual and emotional boot camp. I need to be prepared for that rather than expecting a walk in the park, and then being shocked into giving up when it doesn’t feel like I hoped it would.

Panic, Privacy and Parking

This is an experiment I read about in a book on mindfulness and creativity. Two groups of students were given a task where they had to get a mouse through a maze. One group had to solve the maze by getting to the piece of cheese at the centre; the other group had to escape from a very scary owl in order to get there. Afterwards both groups were given a creative task to solve, and the cheese hunters performed much better than the owl avoiders because the owl avoiders were all still frightened.

When we are in a state of fear, bits of the brain stop working. This is why sharing our work is so complex, because it all depends on whether we will find attention pleasant or terrifying. Some people find the prospect of immediate attention stimulating – if that’s you, then keep enjoying it – but others get scared. Often, if we think of other people’s reactions too early in the process, we can’t write because we are paralysed with fear – the response of other people has become an enormous and terrifying owl. Readers do turn into cheese for me, but not until later in the process.

Much of writing a memoir is knowing what to worry about when. I could never have written The Last Act of Love if I had considered all the things I would have to do in the later stages. It was only by telling myself it was destined for a drawer that I could find the privacy and space to get going. In the early stages you have to shut the world out, and in the later stages you have to let it in. Even for short pieces like book reviews or columns, I have learnt that if I get stuck it is usually because I am too focused on the last stage – what will people think? – and that this is preventing me from getting my ideas down. Whereas if I go back to basics and just start bashing out some thoughts, I will see it take shape on the page, and can then edit and craft it.

The most important thing is to make a start, to get used to putting some words on paper. The main blockers to this are worries that we are doing it wrong and fears about what people will think. So by parking these two huge concerns until later, we give ourselves the creative freedom to play around in the now, away from performance anxiety and from the need for praise and fear of criticism. We need to feel free and far away from judgement so we can allow the act of writing to work its magic. Privacy allows us to park all the things that worry us so that all we have to do is get some words on the paper.

And what is the cheese? It’s accessing our own creative and playful side. We can be in a state of calm, curious, compassionate wellbeing rather than doing an impression of a frozen rodent. We can walk up to the wardrobe and open the door.

The Death of the Reader

Don’t worry! We will resurrect them later. I love and adore having readers, and it truly is one of the great privileges of my life that people look at my work and respond. But at an early stage of the process I have to try and forget all about them, or I can’t get anything on the page. The early words are too fragile to be exposed. I worry about giving offence and not sufficiently checking my privilege. I get very frightened of doing things wrong, of upsetting people I know and angering those I don’t. The only way that I can write a first draft of anything is to imagine that everyone is dead for about 90 per cent of the process.

That is a bit extreme, obviously. A gentler metaphor which I have developed over time is the lighthouse. I imagine myself as a lighthouse and give it different rooms, including a swanky bathroom in which I take long baths and a palatial study. I can while away a lot of time furnishing my lighthouse. The key thing is that I am safe, cut off, surrounded by ocean, and it is completely up to me if and when I switch the beam on.

So, we can quieten the fears, feel OK in ourselves and be up for exploring what we want to say. We can tolerate the discomfort of not knowing so we can excavate ourselves onto the page, and we know that then – very eventually – we will be able to make it better as we begin to imagine a reader and think about turning our lighthouse beam on.

PART TWO

Excavation

My Tool Bag

Let me introduce you to my tools:

Mind mapping

We already met this when we were looking at fears. I like it because it is an escape from the linear and the logical. All you do is put a word or an idea or a subject in the middle of your page and then branch out from it. Often, you might then want to take one of your new words and put that at the centre of a new page. There is something liberating about not writing in sentences that means you are free to focus on the pure content. It is the quickest way I know to capture distinct but connected ideas. It can be very useful to have a visual representation of an idea or theme on paper. As you map what you already know, you start digging about and stimulating memories, seeing patterns and connections.

Lists

Alongside maps I like to make lists, to harvest ideas and content with no pressure to think about or explain what it means. I like the cumulative nature of a list.

Freewriting

This is the act of loosely writing in sentences but not trying to create beautiful prose or use clever words or striking images. The only thing you have to do is keep the pen moving across the page or your fingers across the keyboard. If you don’t know what to write, then just write that you don’t know what to write. It works because the act of lowering our expectations about the quality of the writing liberates us to explore and play around. The more I write, the more I try to make all of my writing into freewriting. Try it now. Give me a page on the prompt: ‘I bought this book because . . .’

Prompts and questions

I love to use prompts and questions, both in my own work and teaching, because it is often easier and more stimulating to respond than to start with a blank page. You’ll see lots of this as you move on through the book.

Timed writing

Timing is great for people who don’t have enough time – surely there is a five-minute window that can be found – and for people with too much time. If we have three hours, then it is too easy to spend the first five minutes or much more fidgeting around in the chair and then convincing ourselves we need a cup of coffee, or to just go and deal with something else quickly, or to look up that quote or fact. Timing is also good because it lulls the fear and is a wonderful way to sidestep procrastination. One of the miracles with timing yourself is that you will be amazed with what you can achieve if you only have limited time. The dark side of that is how easy it is to fritter and waste precious time if we haven’t made a plan of how to use it. I have done this myself and often work with people who say that they took some leave from work, or escaped their children, or even hired a cottage, but then panic set in when the moment of action arrived. They felt burdened by the weight of expectation, and the time was spent in anxiety, staring out of the window or – worse – staring at their phone.

I would suggest not using your phone to time yourself as it is too easy to get distracted. I have a set of egg timers. They are pretty with different coloured sand. I use the five- and fifteen-minute timers for writing exercises. Often I am still writing an hour later. I never make myself stop when the timer runs out; it is just to get me started. The fifteen-minute timer is especially useful if there is something I am resisting doing. ‘I’ll give it fifteen minutes first thing tomorrow,’ I say, and that often gives me enough momentum to charge into a difficult scene.

I use the thirty-minute timer to chunk up a longer stretch. Say I am going back to a project after a break and want to work on it every morning for a week. I’ll commit to two hours every day. After two flips – an hour – I will stand up and have a stretch. If I want to, I can go and get myself a cup of tea, as long as I don’t dawdle or talk to my husband or open the post. Then I flip the timer again. Four flips and I’m done. Two hours is as much as I ask of myself in a stretch. Often I want to carry on for a bit and so I do. This technique has made my writing life less anguished. By scheduling the time, right down to when I am allowed to wriggle about, I can ignore the voices in my head trying to convince me that I need a rest or a drink or to go and do something else. When I get into it, I won’t need the timer; I’ll forget to flip because I am happily absorbed in what I’m doing. This is fine. I’ll come back to it when I get stuck.

You can also use this strategy for meditation, and I often set my thirty-minute timer when taking a bath, as I am inclined to get in with a book and lose track.

The notebook

I always have a notebook on the go. It needs to be something that is easy to carry around, so although I prefer A4 size, I tend to go for A5 for my everyday book. I like decent quality paper but don’t want something so fancy that it intimidates me. I usually buy them from the stationery sections of bookshops, but will sometimes experiment with a sketchbook or music paper. I have a passion for squared paper that I acquired when living in France. I don’t know what appeals so much about it. I like variety and enjoy the search for the perfect notebook so much that I don’t really want to find it.

Big space

I love to make mind maps on really big bits of paper that I stick up on the walls. I have a tabletop flipchart pad with adhesive sheets and a roll of magic whiteboard that clings to walls. It is profoundly useful in a way that I don’t fully understand to map my mind and see my thoughts displayed. Looking around my room at the moment, I have one for this book – it says ‘Writing Book’ in the middle – and one for the novel I am writing. I have another for ‘Ideas’ and another for ‘Quotes’. I often wake up in the night with a thought I want to capture and I will walk into this room, write it up on the wall and then go back to bed. I also have an outsize pad of paper in the shape of a speech bubble that I keep on my desk for general doodling, and an A3 sketchpad.

My ultimate fantasy would be a whole room painted white. I could write all over the walls and then redecorate it when I had finished the book to make it ready for the next one. Maybe one day . . .

Colourful things

I like to intentionally stimulate the curious and childlike part of myself rather than the anxious ‘but what will people say’ part. So I often use felt tips or coloured pencils for mind mapping and freewriting. I have a range of colourful Post-it notes that I dot around me with quotes or things I want to remember. I am inclined to feel a bit embarrassed about this and scared that people will mock me, so was delighted to see in a recent Hilary Mantel interview that she enjoys playing with coloured pencils and drawing on her whiteboard too. Of course, if I practised what I preached, I would not need to wait for Hilary Mantel to give me permission, but still.

Project

I like using the word ‘project’ to describe work in progress. It reminds me a bit of school, where projects were often fun and involved personal choice. It is a less frightening word than ‘book’ and encompasses everything, including the maps and scribbles and all the stuff still lodged inside us. It seems to fit nicely with the period of excavation.

Let me put you to work

Bearing in mind everything we have discussed so far, take your notebook, set a timer if that feels right, and work to these prompts.

I want to write about . . .

I want to do it because . . .

What holds me back is . . .

I am going to park all that and just focus on . . .

Daily Writing

It was the words that seemed to dislodge my most secret feelings.

ELENA FERRANTE

The first thing I am going to suggest you do is adopt a daily writing practice. Think of this like warming up before a run, or playing scales at the piano before composing. We need to limber up, stretch our fingers and our minds, and loosen off any expectations we have of ourselves. You can call it morning pages, messy pages, journalling or whatever you like.

I do mine first thing because it suits my life, and I like what comes when I am still half in a dream. I know that I do my best work and thinking in the morning, and so I commit to not wasting what Virginia Woolf would call ‘the cream of my brain’. I aim to do it every weekday. I have done this regularly since summer 2017, which is also when I got sober. Before that, whatever regime I set up was no proof against my drinking. I was often too hungover to keep my commitment to myself.

Should you do it in a notebook or on a computer? I use my laptop at the moment, mainly because something happened to my hands during pregnancy and I struggle to write at length with a pen. I think if I had total free choice I would write in notebooks, because there is something extremely appealing about watching the words grow across the paper. It is also pleasing to see the notebooks accumulate.

The main thing with using technology is that you have to be disciplined about not looking at the internet or your email. There is software you can buy that helps you do this. I find it works if I create strict boundaries and then keep them: ‘I don’t connect to the outside world from my writing room,’ and ‘If I am at home, I don’t connect to the outside world before midday.’ These two rules give me enough freedom from distraction to do my daily practice and my daily writing. If you find it difficult to resist – and don’t forget, there are legions of behavioural scientists working very hard to make it difficult for you to resist – then try using a notebook instead. Sometimes my system will break down, and I’ll rebel against myself and keep checking my email because I am excited or nervous about something, or sneakily checking the news. It is never a one-off when I do this, but creates an avalanche of bad habits. Eventually I will need to re-commit.

Be flexible and work out what your lifestyle will support. There were times when I couldn’t do what I do now because I didn’t have a room of my own and never woke before Matt. He was always there when I opened my eyes: ‘Is it morning time?’ Back then I would write my pages into a notebook on the tube to work, if I could get a seat, or at lunchtime if I couldn’t. If I am travelling around then I try to do them as close to the start of the day as possible, but it doesn’t always work out. I always regret it, though, if busyness means I’ve missed a few days. I think of it as essential housekeeping for my soul.

The specifics are only important in that you need to decide them beforehand so that you don’t waste time dithering: ‘Oh yes, I’m supposed to be doing that writing thing. I wonder how much to do? And shall I use my phone or what?’ This drains out our energy and creativity, and offers endless opportunities for procrastination: ‘Maybe I should wait until I’ve got a good notebook/have investigated that internet-blocking software/have found an ergonomic pen,’ etc. So plan out in advance what you are going to do. Start small. Regularity and consistency is the thing to strive for. Better to write 200 words every day than pledge to do 1,000 and give up on day three because it is too onerous. If you are using a computer then word count is the best measure; if a notebook then go for the number of pages, depending on how big they are. When I was using a notebook, I would write on every other line for three pages. You can also use time as your measure. Fifteen minutes is a good amount, but if you can only manage five then make the most of it. You’ll be amazed at what you can do in five minutes if that is all you have. Remember that you are not aiming for beautiful prose or perceptive observations. The only thing you have to achieve is words on the page.

What do I write about? Life’s flotsam and jetsam. A hotchpotch of things I’ve done or seen, bits of fiction that occur to me, or reflections on the books I’m writing or reading. I start by writing the time and often some kind of reflection on my sleep. There is also a lot of grumbling. I use these secret, private pages to let off steam. There’s a lot of ‘dishwasher’, which is my shorthand for domestic niggles. When I still worked in a bookshop, I used to drain down about annoying colleagues and customers. When I ran a charity, I poured my stress about funding applications onto the page. It is much better for me to get my complaints on paper than to allow them to slosh around in me and surface eventually as resentment. I write about feeling sad, about how much I love the people in my life and how much I fear losing them. I often finish off with a few things I’m feeling grateful for.

You could put down your dreams or what the weather is like. If you find your morning pages are too dominated by current affairs then consider having a break from the media. It was doing this that made me question why I spent so much time plugged into the news cycle agonizing about things over which I have no control. Write about writing. When I was at sixth-form college doing theatre studies, we had to keep a ‘working notebook’. It was supposed to be a collection of reflections on our creative journey, but we all ended up making them up the day before our assignments had to be handed in. What a wasted opportunity, I now think, as I write thousands of words over a year on what I am writing and how it is going. It is very useful to look back on.

This practice developed accidentally, but I do now use it to store up treats for my future self, especially as my memory alters with age. I just opened a random page and found myself in a shop near Kelso where I was teaching with my friend Janine. I’d written about texting Matt a photo of an ornamental elephant. It had a price tag that showed it was reduced to £150 from £250. He texted back: That’s still a lot for an elephant.

This is tricky to balance because I do think an important principle is that this writing is not supposed to be ‘product’, that we are not trying to amuse or entertain even ourselves, but I do enjoy looking back at it and find it useful as source material for other things.

Sometimes I will start writing towards what I’ll be working on later. If the Muse comes knocking then I don’t turn her away, and it is another reason why I like doing it on a computer. I can often immediately cut and paste a couple of paragraphs into my work in progress.

As I said, I try to do this every weekday. I know people who swear by every single day, but I find I like a complete break from myself at the weekend. That’s probably down to writing being my job, and if I had more conventional work and during the week felt like too much of a scramble, I might only do it at the weekend. If I miss the morning I will do it later, and there is a different quality to writing at night. My first-thing writing tends to be broader, more thematic, more dreamlike. I can see I am less grounded in reality in the morning and more reactive by the evening, when I am usually responding to events of the day.

Sometimes it flows and I feel like a genius, other times every word is an effort and I am slow and sluggish. I will always feel better if I do it. As with freewriting, if I can’t think of anything to write, then I just write that I can’t think of anything to write. I now think these sessions may be more important than the fluent ones. It does sound very simple, just to write with no expectation for a few minutes every day, but the dividends are huge if you stick at it.

So, will you do it tomorrow? Decide in advance what to do, write it down, and then, as you lie in bed, drifting off, remind yourself both of your intention and the specifics:

Tomorrow I will wake up at 6.30 a.m., reach for the notebook on my bedside table and write three pages with my purple pen.

Tomorrow I will wake with the sun, go downstairs and type 500 words into the file I have already created on my computer.

Tomorrow, in the first possible moment after I have done my caring duties, I will set a timer for five minutes and write in my new notebook.

Tomorrow, after work, I will stop at that cafe on the way home and write 250 words into the Notes app on my phone.

Go for it.

Have fun. Or don’t. And don’t try to be clever or writerly or to create beautiful prose. Lower your expectations of yourself. All you have to do is turn up at the page.

If complete blankness feels like too much of a stretch, you can use a simple writing prompt to get going. I have a few that I reach for and you can collect your own.

Last night I dreamt . . .

So now get up . . .

What a thrill . . .

My heart leaps up when I behold . . .

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .

Here we go again . . .

I have a dream . . .

Emotional Inventory

Sometimes I don’t have the oomph for my daily writing. I am distressed or overwhelmed, and it just feels too much to have to write with no guidance. So I came up with some questions to use as prompts and, over time, I have come to see that answering these regularly is a really good way to take my emotional temperature and to work out what is bothering me. I started doing this for mental health reasons but soon realized it was good for my writing, because it was gently forcing me into an authentic relationship with myself.

Pure positive thinking has never worked for me. I’ve tried it – ignoring everything I don’t like and hoping that it will go away – but I need to acknowledge what I find troubling, because if I don’t, it ferments inside me. Once the bad stuff is out of me I can jump onto a positive track, feeling liberated to see the good stuff in the world. Answering these questions seems to bring me to an acceptance that life can be hard and beautiful at the same time.

My therapist friend Claire says all our emotions are valid and we should not try to ignore the more challenging ones. Our emotional responses give us information about how we are being impacted by the world and it’s helpful to listen, even when that is uncomfortable. But it is not a good idea to store them up and carry them around! We don’t want to look through a pessimistic lens and retell ourselves negative stories. What does benefit us is being honest about what is happening in the present. The aim is to sit with our feelings and not judge, to explore what is live and true, and honour our experience.

This is big work. We may have absorbed messages from our culture about, say, anger being bad or unladylike, or sadness being weak and unmanly. I find that answering these questions on a regular basis helps me unpack all of that.

So, have a go. You might make interesting discoveries. For example, I have realized I am more comfortable with being sad than I am with being angry. You don’t have to answer them all and there might be other emotions you want to put in. I tend to do them instead of rather than as well as morning pages, and not to bother when I am feeling calm and happy. This isn’t about forcing myself to feel bad. But when I start to feel restless and grumpy, when I wonder why I can’t sleep or seem to be slumping into a bad mood, they often show me the answer. It is our secrets that make us sick, and by ignoring the things that distress us, we store up problems for the future. Bear in mind that when you first do this you may have a lot of built-up stuff. If you carry on, it all becomes more manageable.

I have designed them to get the crap out first and then pivot my mind to a more positive train of thought.

Here they are:

What are you sad about?

What are you frightened of?

What are you angry about?

What are you jealous about?

What are you grateful for?

What are you looking forward to?

And this is a recent innovation. A last question to encourage a bit of daydreaming:

Wouldn’t it be nice . . .

Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up every day without a hangover?

Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy my writing?

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could stop biting my nails?

Wouldn’t it be nice if my next book came out smoothly and happily?

Wouldn’t it be nice if I just chose not to worry about XXX any more?

Iceberging

Hang on a second, you say. Isn’t this all a bit self-indulgent? Shouldn’t I be working harder? Don’t I need a plan? I’m not expecting anyone to read all this guff about my emotions, am I? When are we getting to the storytelling?

Trust me, your words are the keys that will unlock the door to yourself. You need to get all this stuff out of your mind and onto the page. If you want to be reassured it is leading somewhere, then think of it as iceberging. Ernest Hemingway had a theory that a story should be the tip of an iceberg but that the author had to know what lay beneath. I find this a very useful idea to apply to memoir writing. We need to plumb the depths of ourselves, but not all of that will end up on the page. I have tried to write the tip of the iceberg and can’t. I need to botch down a load of stuff and then – finally – carve it away to create the tip of the iceberg. And then start thinking about how a reader will experience it. This is why the linear approach to writing – I’ll start with the first sentence and end with the last – just doesn’t work for me. And why I can’t plan a whole work. I don’t know at the start what the key themes are going to be so I can’t write them down in order. In my experience, the single biggest thing that trips up inexperienced writers is underestimating how much work, both on and off the page, goes into any project, and how much of that work doesn’t end up being reader-facing but is essential to the process. And don’t underestimate yourself as a source. There were times in my life when I struggled to write because I felt insignificant and couldn’t imagine anyone ever being interested in anything I might have to say. Now I wish I had my pages to look back on. I’d like to read about when I used to cram two cigarettes into my fifteen-minute break in the smoking staffroom at Harrods. I regret not doing them during my pregnancy and the birth of my son and the publication of my first book. I even wish I’d been more thorough during Brexit and Trump and the coronavirus. I’d like to go back, now, and read what I thought at the time. So don’t worry that all these scribblings don’t immediately lead somewhere, and don’t think you can’t do it because you aren’t interesting enough. I bet a teenage black girl living in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s didn’t think of herself as noteworthy, but I would love to read a granular account of what she felt like during the bus boycott. I’m sure it didn’t occur to my Irish grandmother that her life of bringing up nine children in poverty would have broad appeal, but I would love to read what she thought about as she stood in the queue for the pawnshop.

Physical Sensory Writing

Describe the coffin not the grief.

JIM CRACE

If you look at the last paragraph of the previous section, I said how I’d love to know what the young girl in Montgomery felt like and what my grandmother thought about, and that is true, but the way I would most effectively get there is if they described their world, rather than their thoughts and feelings.

As we start thinking about writing in an engaging way that other people will enjoy, we want to explore how to write with texture and depth so that we can create a sense of time, place and atmosphere. An easy shorthand for this is not to tell us what you think and feel; instead share what you see, hear, taste, touch and smell.

To write about the coffin, not the grief, as Jim Crace says, is the single most useful piece of technical advice about writing, and I have it in mind with everything I do to move me from the abstract to the concrete.

So, let me tell you about my first experience of death, which happened when I was nine and my grandad died.

Version 1:

We were all really upset that Grandad had died, but I’m not sure I fully got it until the hearse arrived. Then I felt sad and kept remembering all the nice things he did for me. I really loved him because he was so much fun.

Version 2:

The big black car pulled up outside the house and I saw the long wooden box in the back. The grown-ups fell silent. Mum took my hand in hers, and it was only then that I fully understood that Grandad was dead and would never again tell us stories or take us fishing.

So, if you look at these two versions, the second is probably much more engaging. Why? Because it is more sensory – we have sight, hearing and touch. It is also more specific: we’ve moved from ‘fun’ to ‘stories’ and ‘fishing’. I changed ‘hearse’ to ‘big black car’ because it felt more fitting with the child’s point of view. We are in the moment with the car pulling up at the house, rather than just being told about it years later.

If I were to work it up more, I wouldn’t talk about facts yet – how old I was, how old Grandad was, what year it was, how he died – but would remember the details. Mum and her sister weren’t wearing black but the older ladies were, and I was fascinated by the sequins on Auntie Pam’s blouse. Later, one of Grandad’s sisters told me he would always look down on me, and I felt uneasy at the thought of him watching me from the corner – in his stripy blue jumper, with his shock of grey hair – as I picked my nose or sat on the toilet.

So much of the technical aspect of writing is learning how to invite the reader into the physical world rather than only giving them access to your interior monologue. This is often described as ‘show not tell’, and it is all about using the senses to put the detail on the page.

You could try playing a scene in your head as though it is a film. And not one with a voiceover. That might help you to focus on the outside world rather than what is in your head.

Have a go now. Tell me about your first experience of death or feel free to choose a different subject. Freewrite about it for a few sentences, and then look at what you have and see if there are places where you can be more specific and employ the senses.

Be a bit careful. You don’t want a full roll call: ‘I sat in the window of the cafe and watched the waves come in and out. I could smell the tang of seaweed in the air. I listened to the rumble of the cappuccino-making machine, and my mouth watered at the thought that soon I’d be chewing down on one of their complimentary almond macaroons and warming my freezing hands on a mug of foaming coffee . . .’ That might be a little too much!

Explore Your Senses

Sit or lie down in a place where you feel safe. Take a few deep breaths and then, one by one, concentrate on your senses. How does your body feel against the bed or chair? What can you hear? Traffic? Birdsong? The buzz of someone else’s TV? Can you taste anything? The last thing you ate? Coffee? Toothpaste? Can you smell anything? Yourself? Your perfume? The room you are in? What can you see? Keep your eyes closed but notice what is happening with the light on your eyelids. Can you explore more than one sense at the same time? Can you be aware of the feel of your feet and of the sound outside your window and of the taste in your mouth?

Start doing this at home and then explore it – safely! – while you are out and about. I like to do it after a run, still slightly breathless, very aware of the thud of my heartbeat, the sound of my breath, and the pleasing ache in my legs. It is wonderful to do it in nature, including your own garden, if you have one, and I have done it on the train, on a bus, on the underground, in art galleries, in libraries and on various benches. It is a mindfulness exercise so should make you feel good, but it also tunes you into your senses, primes the pump for you to notice what is happening around you, and to recall and write about your past events with an eye and an ear out for detail.

Details are the portkeys that help you travel to other places.

Mining for Gold

Let’s harvest some detail to be precise about. I am going to suggest a barrage of exercises you can play with. I didn’t use them for my first book because I used to think that if only I were good enough, talented enough, I wouldn’t need to bother with silly exercises. Now I know that it all starts with a spark and that playing these games is the best way to find one. I’d suggest you do them all with a five-minute timer to start off with. You might feel you don’t need it as you carry on, but don’t labour the exercises or start editing during them. Your responses are supposed to be quick and dirty, not elegant and well thought out.

What works really well is to make a map or list, and then take one piece of content and use it as the subject of another map or list.

So let’s start with that. Set a timer and do a mind map of significant places. Then choose one and give yourself another flip, then drill down further.

My places might be:

Lanner, Ponsanooth, Carlton, Snaith, Lupton Flats, Delph Lane, Hunslet, France, Rotherhithe, Little Russell Street, Russell Square, New York, Barons Court, Finborough Road, Parsons Green, Chiswick, Falmouth.

And then I choose France.

My studio flat, the supermarket, the launderette with the old women in black, the café at the language school with the coffee machine where we played cards, Place de la République, Charlie’s flat with that bed that came out of the wall, the beach with the tanks, the cafés with the ‘welcome to our liberators’ stickers, that restaurant at the seafront with the lobsters in glass tanks, the bungee-jumping place, my very French postbox, the rubbish chute – the vide-ordure – Charlie’s car and listening to Alliance Ethnik and Edwyn Collins and Francis Cabrel. The fairground. The teenagers waving their lighters in the air at Paul Young. The cricket match. Spitting the cherry stones out of the window and feeling like Isadora Wing.

See how much good detail there is? If I’d tried to write sentences about France, I’d probably still be bogged down in explaining why I was there in the first place.

To try a list, let’s play Desert Island Discs. Make a list of music that is important to you. As many tracks as you like. I’m not looking for good tunes here, not your favourites; I’m after significance. The song playing at the school disco where you had your first snog. The song your mother kept playing the summer your father left her. The hymn sung at your best friend’s funeral. List away, and then flip the timer and write about what was happening as the song played:

‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’

‘Abide With Me’

‘True’

‘Queen Bitch’

‘The Wild Rover’

‘Sally MacLennane’

‘Common People’

‘Girl from Mars’

‘The Day We Caught the Train’

‘Bohemian Like You’

‘True’ by Spandau Ballet:

We were on a school trip to the Isle of Man. The disco was on the final night, and when the last song came on, all the girls and boys lined up facing each other, the boys put their hands on our waists, and we put ours on their shoulders. I don’t remember how this was suggested or choreographed and was more preoccupied with who was ending up with who than anything else. I was a bit miffed to be stuck with a boy from my year. He was a bit short. I’d rather have been dancing with almost anyone else, but as the song ended he pulled my head down, and I didn’t move away in time, and he shoved his lips right over mine and chewed on my face a bit. Later that night, back at the hostel, one of his friends came and asked me out on his behalf. I said no. I was wearing a pair of pink shorts and a pink stripy T-shirt.

Here is a list of topics. Take any of them, or make up your own, and do a map or lists and then freewrite. You can make them all more specific: people from school, or places where I was stationed, or presents from my childhood. You can put a particular spin on it: people I have hated, people I have loved.

People

Objects

Houses

Clothes

Presents

Meals

Injuries

You can make a few notes as you list or map:

Presents:

The Anne of Green Gables boxed set.

The strange teddy bear towel from J’s mum: ‘I know you really like bears.’ But I don’t.

The Furla bag from B and A. The staggering generosity of it. Made me feel like a grown-up. At the time I was working at Harrods and we had to decant all our belongings into a see-through bag so they could see we weren’t nicking stuff. Having the beautiful posh bag made me feel special. It was black and had red side pockets behind zips. I don’t know what happened to it.

The wireless headphones John gave me after our trip together. Turned out to be so important in lockdown.

The money Mum and Dad gave me the first birthday after M’s accident. I was glad they hadn’t tried to be celebratory.

The kintsugi bookmark from Inbal.

The How to Play the Ukulele book from Crystal.

The lighthouse from Jo.

The octopus paperweight from Esther.

The seashell soaps in the heart-shaped box from Matt.

See how quickly a list of things gains resonance as we start thinking of the story behind the object? It is also immediately obvious how important the giver is – more relevant, really, than the gift itself.

More ways of harvesting objects. What would you save from your house if it was burning down? What three things would you donate to a time capsule? Imagine you have the beliefs of a Saxon warrior or an Egyptian pharaoh. What possessions would be buried with you to help you in the afterlife?

Can you list objects from different times of your life? Try a mind map where you put ‘Me at 7/17/57/77’ in the middle and remember what you found precious then.

Here’s another list:

Alcohol

Films

Shopping

Eating

Sport

Reading

Sex

Children

Dogs

Christmas

Explore one of the above or cross-reference it with your people list.

Dad and Shopping:

My dad still doesn’t like shops because his sisters used to send him to steal milk when he was a child. They were hungry and he was the littlest, so they figured he’d be less likely to get a hard punishment. He was never caught but the anxiety of it lives on in him, and he worries people will think he is up to no good. He has only recently told me this when we were talking about how difficult it is to grow out of the shame of poverty. I always knew he was on edge in shops and tried to avoid them, and now I understand why.

A few more prompts:

When I was young . . .

We never told the truth in my family about . . .

I was always a bit frightened of . . .

The first thing I remember is . . .

If you are writing about yourself at a particular time, these exercises can help you emotionally time travel. If you have photos of yourself at the right age, it can be worth putting them on the wall and trying to remember how you saw things through young eyes. What did you love when you were that age? What did you fear? Who was your favourite person? What was your most prized possession?

What we are doing here is stimulating the memory, allowing glimpses of the past to percolate up. Once you have some bits of content, start writing about them with no aim other than to explore. Why these memories, why this thing? If you do this regularly, you’ll be surprised at what you can unearth.

What sticks in your mind? There is a reason why we remember things, so worry less about having total recall, and put your energy into getting what you do know onto the page in detail, using all of your senses.

Kindling

I am watching my friend Janine make up a fire in the cottage where we are running a writing course. We’ve been mining the self, doing maps and exercises and freewrites. I’m tired but enjoying the aftermath of the teaching. I felt honoured to hold the space as the writers dug around in themselves. Three big logs sit in the middle of the fireplace, smouldering but failing to catch. Janine stands up. ‘I need to get more kindling,’ she says, and comes back with a metal bucket full of smaller bits of wood. She arranges them and then kneels down in front of the fire and blows. After much huffing and poking, the flames catch the big logs and the room fills with warmth and light. As I relax, I think how writing needs kindling; that to get the big logs of our story to burn, we need to assemble our kindling and blow. If we do that diligently, soon we will have a raging fire.

Back at home I talk to my mentee, Nicholas. He is trying to make sense of his life, how watching his father bully his mother has impacted his own behaviour in romantic relationships. The words are coming, but he is dealing with a lot of self-loathing and shame. He often apologizes and finds it difficult to accept that I enjoy his company. His urgent desire to get it all on the page fights with his worry that he must immediately know everything about his project, how it will start and end, what the title will be, who will read it. He is struggling to tolerate the structural confusion and is very frightened of getting it wrong. We chat for an hour and he writes down a new list of scenes to explore. He says I am breathing oxygen into his work. ‘I’m glad,’ I say. ‘Try to give it space to burn; don’t immediately smother those flickers with the safety blanket of doubt, despair and logic.’

Voice

Literally, voice is the sound coming out of your mouth. In books, it means the quality of personality and presence in writing. Voice is both simple and profound. What you need to do is focus on really sounding like yourself, but this is more complex than it should be because often we have been told or taught that there is something wrong with us, or we think we aren’t good enough or may get into trouble.

When I was growing up, people would say, ‘She likes the sound of her own voice,’ and ‘What happened to you, did you swallow a dictionary?’ and ‘You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself,’ and ‘Book learning won’t get you a husband.’ Years later, I realized I was allowing these memories to hold me back, that every time I sat down to write I was letting in those criticisms.

Fear is the number-one thing that stops us finding our voice. When I figured out what was happening, I could write it down and it lost much of its power over me. What is stopping you being your full self and accessing your true voice?

Often people trip themselves up because they think they should sound like a ‘writer’ and use longer and better words, but the crucial thing to grasp is that this is your story and we want to hear it in your own voice. Don’t drain out your energy thinking you need to be someone else, just be you.

I have reached the point where I do want to like the sound of my own voice, and it is my ambition for everyone I work with, and for you, dear writer. Imagine that! Imagine if you could find your own voice and like it!

Let’s do this as a warm-up. I am going to ease you into your voice by providing some prompts. I just want you to continue these sentences as honestly as you can with the sole aim of sounding like yourself. Don’t worry about how you come across or what other people might think. Just aim to put yourself on the page in all your messy glory. You might like to take an hour or even more over these. You could try going for a walk first, if you can. Something I like to do is go out with a notebook, no phone, and enough money for a coffee and nothing else.

I was born . . .

The first thing I remember is . . .

As a child, I was . . .

My parents were . . .

The most important thing that happened was . . .

School was . . .

I really hated . . .

The best thing about growing up was . . .

My best friend was . . .

I fell in love with . . .

My 10th/16th/18th birthday was . . .

When I feel sad I . . .

Work often makes me feel . . .

I will never forgive . . .

The most fun I ever had was when . . .

I’ll always be grateful for . . .

I wish that . . .

When I am on my deathbed, I hope I remember . . .

If I could time travel, what I would like to say to my younger self is . . .

I want to tell my story because . . .

What stops me is the fear that . . .

What might help me with this is . . .

When I have done it I will feel . . .

Ugly Noises

Do you fancy yelling your head off? This is something I learnt from my friend Kate. She is a singer and we met at an event where we both had to speak for fifteen minutes. I was talking about The Last Act of Love and about the years when that story was stuck inside me, and the relief I felt to get it on the outside, to tame it onto the page. She was talking about the time she lost her voice and how she found it again.

Kate and I chatted afterwards and immediately decided to be friends. We agreed that she would teach me to sing and I would help her to write something longer than a song. We both expected the other one to show us technical things. I expected to learn about the diaphragm. She thought I would correct her grammar. We were both surprised to find that what we mainly did was to give each other permission. And the singing exercises were so useful for my writing!

Kate says that singing is just humming with your mouth open. So try that for me. Start humming. Feel the tingle on your lips. Now open your mouth. See, you’re singing.

Next, we are going to liberate the voice by making all sorts of sounds and not worrying about whether they sound nice. What I want you to do is make a range of noises. Really twist up your face. Groan and growl and gurn and gurgle. Don’t worry about being polite or appropriate or likeable. Whine and whinge. If you can find a place to do it, then scream and shout and shriek. Make the ugliest noises you can.

It is exhilarating! It is wonderful to do this with other people. But it’s also good alone, if you can find a space where you won’t alarm anyone. I find being by the sea is good because the sea makes a lot of noise itself and being in nature helps. If you don’t want to be heard – or hear yourself – you could put on very loud music.

It is a great way to get rid of frustration, but I think it also unlocks the fear I was carrying that the worst thing I might do was to write an ugly sentence or reveal myself as unattractive to the world. Kate showed me that humming and singing are both wonderful as a warm-up for writing and now, when I get stuck, I make ugly noises to free myself.

Negative Self-Talk

As we aim to find the right voice for our project, let’s also take a moment to make sure we don’t undermine ourselves when we do say something. It breaks my heart when I hear someone refer to themselves as ‘rabbiting on’, ‘banging on’ or ‘waffling on’. I once heard a woman give a very good introduction and then say, ‘That’s enough drivel from me.’ A brilliant writer held the audience entranced and longing for more but then said, ‘I know I waffle a lot,’ at the end. Please let’s all agree not to use dismissive language about what we say or write.

And can we stop slagging ourselves off? Often we talk to ourselves in a way that we never would to anyone else. Keep an ear out for self-censure and gently stop yourself if you are beating yourself up. Just recently I said, ‘I’m so stupid and lazy,’ when I was feeling sad that I hadn’t made more progress in a project. I was able to notice, stop and think that I wasn’t being fair on myself. And I wasn’t! I’d had lots of work and other commitments. I was able to note my frustration and turn it around to, ‘I’m keen to crack on with that. I’ll make a plan to give it lots of attention and focus next week.’

Letter Work

A great way to play with voice is to notice the way it shifts depending on who you are addressing. I adore collections of letters and one of my favourite books is Love, Nina by my friend Nina Stibbe, made up of letters written to her sister, Vic, when Nina had just moved to London to be a nanny. Nina wasn’t thinking about technique, she wasn’t actively trying to create a sense of time, place and atmosphere, but she does it all brilliantly because she is an interesting person with an eye for detail, and because Vic is the older sister she wants to impress so she is putting in plenty of effort.

In Letters Home by Sylvia Plath, we see the correspondence she sent to her mother in which she presents the version of herself that she thinks her mother wants, whereas her journal gives us a different picture. The letters are no less powerful because they may not be completely honest. They breathe with the complexities of that maternal relationship in all its love and obligation.

Let’s have a go. Think of a recent scene from your life. Something you haven’t written about before. It doesn’t have to be dramatic.

Now let’s take it through a few iterations:

Write it as a diary entry

Write it to me

Write it to a friend/parent

Write it to a child

Write it to someone you have just fallen in love with

Write it to an old teacher

Note the ways your voice shifts for a different audience. Do you vary the details, make things age appropriate? Are you trying to protect/project/impress?

Now write a letter for a time capsule that won’t be read until an alien finds it in thousands of years. Try to dig really deep.

If you need a prompt: ‘If I were to really tell the truth about my life, I would say . . .’

You might want to burn it afterwards.

Write a letter to someone you have never forgiven.

Write a letter to someone you long for but who doesn’t exist. The parent or lover or child you never had.

Write a letter to a dead person. Tell them how you are getting on without them.

Write a letter to your past self:

Dear Cathy at 17, the night before Matty’s accident,

Whoosh, you are about to get knocked about by a big wave, my sweetheart. I won’t lie to you, it will be so hard. There are times when you will think you are drowning. But you always bob up again, I promise. And while your world is full of pain at the moment, there is much joy in your future. And you are allowed to feel it and look for it, you know. You’ll learn how closely they weave together, the pain and the joy. You’re about to get an advanced class in suffering. Be kind to yourself. You can do this. You will often think you can’t, but you can. And write it all down. Your words have gone AWOL at the moment, but the sooner you can come back to the page, the better.

With love.

Dear Cathy at 24,

It’s the day of Matty’s funeral and you wish you were dead too. You are in the pub, hosting the wake, putting a brave face on it. You feel out of control. You thought you’d cried all the tears and known all the pain but this is new territory. You think you won’t sustain this. You might go and jump in the river. You might not have to because your heart might just explode in a bloody mess. My dearest one, my love, the important thing I have to tell you is that it does get better. You will be so relieved in the future that you don’t act on these feelings. All you need to do now is stop thinking. Just put yourself to bed. Know that this has been one of the most significant days of your life. You’ve put in the hard yards today. You’ve learnt tough lessons. Life is often cruel but it is also beautiful and, though you can’t see it now, there is so much good stuff out there waiting for you. I promise you that in your future you are glad to be alive.

With love.

Dear Cathy at 47, in January 2020,

Well, hello again. There’s another wave on the way, my darling, but this one is for everyone, not just for you. That pandemic they’re talking about on the news will turn out to be a big deal. It’s fine to spend a week shivering and eating ice cream, but then you’ll remember what you have learnt about what to do when life doesn’t go your way. You’ll be able to think, yes, the blade has come down, life as I knew it is no longer available to me, but I can focus on what I can make of what I’ve got. You’ll be able not to mope too much, not to pine for lost opportunities, but to be grateful for what you do have, and hold steady and offer support to others through this time. You are prepared for this. You can do this. And remember, there is always something to learn. Life isn’t a shop or a spa, it’s a learning experience. There will be times during this year when you are floored by the collateral damage all around you, but you can just about hold it together by telling yourself that you are surfing the big waves and looking for small things to be grateful for. And when you go to bed, you’ll lie there and think, ‘Well, I learnt a lot about being a human today,’ and that will be enough to see you through.

I’m only just ahead of you, so I can’t see far into the future, but I do believe that it still exists and that we are glad to be in it.

With love.

This is all intense stuff. Breathe. Go out for a walk. Look after yourself.

Two Truths and a Lie

This is a fun game to play with voice.

Make three ‘I’ statements about yourself, only two of which are true. Here are mine:

I am married to a Dutch stamp dealer.

I play the piano to relax.

I once went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and got so drunk that when I looked in the mirror the next day, I was surprised to see that my face had been painted in glittery swirls.

Have a go, and then carry on. You don’t have to stop at three.

Here are some more; some are mine and some I have collected from doing workshops.

I used to be married to man called Brian.

I was very good at long jump until I was thirteen.

I have six fingers.

I used to pronounce ‘misled’ as ‘mizzled’.

I’m not that keen on dogs but never tell that to dog-owning friends.

I would rather be with someone I mildly dislike than be alone.

I had measles when I was six and nearly died.

My father was a famous limbo dancer.

I wish I had more children.

I was once shut in a museum overnight.

I used to dislike vegetarians and now I am one.

I have a German grandmother.

I once ate a lemon for a bet.

I was once a nun in a silent order.

I have a black belt in karate.

I was born on the other side of the world.

Make yourself a nice long list. This is all about owning the ‘I’ and considering your relationship with the truth. If you’d like to have more fun with this, set a timer for five minutes and choose one of your own or from the list above and use it as a prompt for a freewrite.

Memoir and Truth

Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous and sublime.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Thinking about the truth in memoir has moral, ethical, philosophical and technical implications. If you are writing for yourself you don’t have to bother much about it, but as soon as you bring in a reader it does need some thought.

When thinking about truth and the memoirist’s obligations and responsibilities, I find it stimulating and enjoyable to consider the oath we would have to swear if we went to court.

I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Do we have to stick to that promise? Let’s break down that sentence and look at it.

The truth: Well, with the caveat that truth is subjective, I do think that if you are presenting something as a true story then you should try to make it so to the best of your ability.

The whole truth: Absolutely not. It wouldn’t be possible anyway. We are not aiming for the kitchen sink. Most early work I read, including my own, has too much in it, too many facts, too much information, too many people. And you don’t need to tell the truth about everything, just because you decide to tell the truth about something.

Nothing but the truth: I think you should aim for this. Don’t tell lies. Don’t try to make yourself out to be better than you were. Or worse. Oliver Cromwell told his portraitist to paint him ‘warts and all’. That’s a good aim.

Write honestly for your future self. My memory is a bit strange these days, and I am really glad that I know for a fact that there are no untruths in my books. This does not mean I have shared everything. There is plenty I have left out, for reasons ranging from not wanting to bore the reader, to protecting others, to wanting to keep some of my secrets to myself, but I have told no lies and I am so very relieved about this.

At Matt’s first school, they had a poster on the wall that encouraged the children to THINK before they said anything and check whether it was true, helpful, interesting, necessary, kind. That is probably an excessively high standard to hold ourselves to, but it is an interesting thought experiment.

You have to make up your own mind about the moral elements. I’ve told you what I think, but should also let you know that I am at the more scrupulous end of the spectrum in these matters. I have a low threshold for being able to sleep at night, and anything I perceive as dishonourable behaviour in myself destroys my peace so isn’t worth it. I know plenty of writers who are a bit more flexible so don’t feel you have to obey me.

The technical aspect is all about remembering you are telling a story, not compiling a police report. It might be useful to think about what a memoir is. It’s not a full autobiography. You aren’t trying to record everything. A memoir is a slice or aspect of a life, or even a lens through which to view a life. What you are aiming for is the essential truth not the literal truth; the spirit and heart of the story, rather than just the facts and dates. The literal truth can get in the way; we can get bogged down in exposition and explanation about who said what to whom and what time the plane arrived, and what second cousin Jim said at the funeral, and the precise way that second cousin Jim was related to Aunt Sandra, and why he was even invited in the first place, and unless Jim is very relevant to the story, we probably don’t need to know.

In many ways a memoir is a magic trick. A good one will give the illusion of real life, but it isn’t real. If you want to write one yourself, it is really helpful to understand some of the sleight of hand. I now see that a lot of my early attempts at writing failed because I didn’t understand the way that narrative works. I was trying to put life on the page in all its messy glory, and was ending up with just a mess. Once I abandoned trying to capture the literal truth, I was on my way.

How Do Memoirs Differ from Real Life?

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

They have fewer people, fewer plot lines, and everything that is included usually has to mean something. In real life, if I forget my keys and go back to my house, I just collect them and carry on with my day. In memoir land, if I’m telling you the story it means I am about to discover something. To get to grips with this, it can be really helpful to imagine yourself telling a story to a stranger on a train or your neighbour over the fence. Note where you would start and stop and how you would – almost without thinking about it – make editorial decisions about which elements to focus on. You wouldn’t feel the need to tell the listener everything about yourself before you embarked on the story.

I like to think of it as edited highlights. It’s the Match of the Day version of your life, and you don’t want to make your reader sit through all your nil-nil draws. It’s not just the brilliant goals – you’ll probably have to include that time you got nutmegged, and when you lost your temper with the ref and got sent off. But you don’t need to include all the travel to and from the ground or let us see you in the shower afterwards.

Remember, you are telling a story. You are not:

Compiling an accurate report.

Writing a documentary.

Being completist.

Presenting your CV.

Giving your therapist’s opinion on how you were shaped by life events.

Settling scores – I always find it uncomfortable if I feel a memoir has a revenge agenda.

Paying tribute – this is what the acknowledgements are for.

Changing the world/helping people – you might be doing a bit of this, but you’ll do it most effectively by telling a good story first.

What Makes Someone a Good Storyteller?

Your continual homework is to listen hard. Some people can be engaging about anything. And there are others who could have something fascinating happen to them and would still make it into a boring story. Working in my parents’ pub was a masterclass in narrative impact, as some people would brighten up my day and others would make my heart sink when I saw them come through the door. People didn’t have to be a laugh a minute. Some of my favourite customers were rather quiet. It was the bores that got on my nerves. The men who behaved like they were doing me a favour by telling me a tedious story I’d heard several times before, where the point of it wasn’t to entertain or inform but to show the other people around the bar how important or powerful they were.

So listen attentively to the people in your life: your family, your colleagues, your neighbours. What makes someone a good storyteller? You’ll probably find that they give enough context so you know what is happening, but not so much that you drown in information. Notice how tedious it is when someone can’t see where the relevant bits are and goes off on lots of tangents, filling in unnecessary background: ‘Well, it was Tuesday – no, actually, it was Wednesday, because the binmen had just been and there’s a new man who doesn’t put the recycling bin back in the way I like, so I’d gone out to check on him, and then, when I was out there in the rain – we’ve had so much rain lately, haven’t we? – I heard the phone and I ran in to answer it, though most people who know me use my mobile so I thought it might be a cold call, and Graham has said we’ve got to be careful of scams, but I picked it up and it was Caroline telling me she’d heard that the house opposite the post office has been sold.’

The more you have to explain a joke, the less funny it is, and it is a bit the same in memoir writing. You have to try to give the reader the information they’ll need to get into the story, but in an organic way. Having one character explain things to another is a good way to do this, as then the reader functions like a witness or eavesdropper, but be careful to go about it in a subtle way so it doesn’t feel like an information dump.

My dad is a fantastic storyteller – with a very relaxed attitude to the truth, by the way; he sees nothing wrong in oiling the wheels a bit if it improves the tale – but when I tried to record him, he became self-conscious and started trying to speak like an ‘educated person’. He lost his power. We weren’t getting to the good stuff. If I tried again, I’d focus more on relaxing him, making sure he knows it is the real him I want. It’s the real you I want, dear writer. What do you really want to say and how will you say it?

A Bit of Nuts and Bolts

We’re not going to do much technical stuff in this book, but you might want to make a few decisions before embarking on a longer piece of writing. These are basic principles. Feel free to ignore them if you want to be more experimental. If this section bores you or puts you off, just skip over it and do what you like.

Point of view

I am writing this sentence and most of this book in the first person. Occasionally I use the second person. I will say, ‘You don’t want to worry too much about all of this. If something comes naturally then just do that.’ Sometimes I use the first person plural. This developed organically: ‘Hopefully it makes us feel like we are in it together, that we are all on the same side.’ Back in the first person, I don’t want to feel that I am preaching at you. In general, for memoir, the first person works really well and I’d recommend starting with it unless you have a burning desire to do otherwise.

Tense

‘I am writing in bed because it is cold outside and because I feel like it.’

‘I was writing in bed because it was cold outside and because I felt like it.’

The most important thing here is consistency. Don’t hop about. You can open in the present and go back to the past.

‘I am writing in bed when I hear the noise of the letter box. As soon as I see Sophie’s handwriting, I am catapulted back to the nineties and the first time I saw her, when I arrived at Lupton Flats. She was . . . We met . . . We did . . . I thought.’

Try not to drift all over the place.

Perspective

I would recommend not trying to jump into the heads of the other people in your memoir. Tell us the story from your perspective and keep the main focus on what you knew at the time, not what other people told you or you later learnt. This is tricky because you are both the narrator of the book and the main character in a story. You are the wise person you are now, who knows everything, but you are also the seventeen-year-old who is in action in the memoir. Much of what we need to do is get into the shoes of our younger self and show what happens from her point of view, rather than explaining it with hindsight and what we now know, or how our therapist has explained it to us.

Try not to get bogged down in making these decisions. I spent a few years not doing anything other than rewriting the first and only chapter of my novel, changing it from the past to the present and back again. It is hard to edit for tense, so if you can make your mind up about what to do at this stage you’ll make your life easier in the future. The best thing to help you with this decision is to read memoirs. Read the first few pages and see what the authors are doing. Are they starting in the present moment and then looping back? Is it all told from the now? How are they balancing themselves as the author with their role as a character? Consider whether what they are doing would also work for you.

Wrestling the Octopus

If I could put down on paper what I actually thought inside my head, I’d be really fucking good . . . Half of it is laziness and half is not being able to articulate.

NOEL GALLAGHER

How on earth do we even go about trying to wrestle the self onto the page? Our thoughts and ideas are so rich and jumbled, and we can’t see how we could ever impose a structure on our messy lives. We often have an urge to tell our story and a confusion about what exactly that story is. This shouldn’t surprise us, really. Life does not exist as a smooth narrative but is full of false dawns, wrong turnings, meandering and dead ends.

I often encounter people who have been carrying a story around for so long that I can almost see it trying to burst out of them. The scale of it feels too huge to be turned into sentences that make sense, and so they feel too overwhelmed to do anything. Some know what they want to write about, others don’t. Or people think they know what their subject is and then discover they’ve been looking in the wrong place. ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘I thought I wanted to write about living in China, but after the workshop I realized that it is really all about how my parents split up when I was five.’

The only problem with not knowing exactly what to write about is if it stops us starting, which it often does. We need to learn to tolerate the discomfort of not yet knowing where we are going so that we can get some ideas down. We have to let it all out so we can – eventually – reel it back in.

What can confuse us when starting to write a memoir is that all the books we read make sense in a way our own stories don’t. It is important to understand that the book probably didn’t flow from the author’s pen in the order we are reading it, but has gone through multitudinous drafts and then had input from an editor, a copy-editor and a proofreader to make it into the final reading experience.

A finished book is one-dimensional. Even if it is structurally adventurous, we move through a book from one word to the next and one page to the next. But in the act of translating our multidimensional thoughts and ideas, we need a different concept of space and time. It is more like layering up paint on an enormous canvas, making a jigsaw, or building a house. I find comfort in picturing an octopus with all those tentacles, some fatter than others, some longer than others.

I have wanted to write books all my life, and was always starting and giving up until I finally finished The Last Act of Love when I was forty-two. One of the main differences between the me who would give up and the me who finishes things is that I have learnt to see it as a taming process. My head is so full. The space around me continually buzzes with thoughts, ideas and emotions in a kaleidoscopic animated game that is a bit like a jigsaw or a chess set but with no rules, where the meaning is often shimmering just out of sight. The thought of moving straight from that to a piece of writing which is several thousand words long, all in the right order, is just too overwhelming.

This is where the mind map comes in. It offers the opportunity to put my thought octopus on the page. When I have captured my preoccupations, I can then start to do something with them.

So let’s start wrestling. In the middle of your page, write ‘The Story of My Life’, and then mind map everything that comes up, all the events and preoccupations that make you into you.

My taming process

My first book, The Last Act of Love, is predominantly about my brother and is the story of what happened to him. My second book, A Manual for Heartache, is my reflections on how to deal with grief and depression. It has bits of memoir in it but is mainly a self-help book rather than a story. My third book, Dear Reader, is a bibliographic memoir about the comfort and joy of reading and has a bit of overlap with the first two, but seen through a different lens. My fourth book, Everyone Is Still Alive, is a novel about the anxieties of modern life and the deeper realities of marriage and parenting, where I mine my own experiences but in a way outside the scope of what we are thinking about here. The book you are reading now is another variation, using my experiences of writing about myself with the aim to help you to do it. This book, more than any of the others, is directly about the reader – that’s you! – but in all my books the urge to communicate is a driving force, and the presence of the reader animates me. All my work springs from a desire to report back from an experience, to offer myself as a point of reference and reflection. That all sounds quite intentional, doesn’t it? And clear! But I didn’t see it like that to begin with. I didn’t write down a list of subjects to explore then work through it. It is only retrospectively that I see the order and understand what I was doing.

I once interviewed Joanna Trollope, a seriously impressive lady. She said she has lots of ideas and, as she is writing her current novel, they circle in the air above her like planes. When she is ready, she looks up and thinks, ‘Right, now I will bring you in to land.’ I admitted to her that I envied her calm and poise, and that if I imagined all my ideas as planes they’d be crashing into each other and I’d get hit by the falling, flaming debris. As time has gone on, however, I have incorporated this into my thinking, and the ideas mind map I keep on my wall feels like I have channelled a bit of her wisdom.

Now, I want you to go back to yourself, your map. You might have lots of subjects and themes. You might have a whole library full of books in you. None of it might make sense at the moment. But hold steady.

What works best for you? Do you want to imagine your ideas as planes circling? Or as tentacles wriggling? If the octopus feels a bit unfriendly, you could try imagining your preoccupations as a sky full of different coloured kites. You could draw this. Allow yourself to have fun, then jump up and catch one by the tail and pull it towards you. This is the kite you are going to fly first.

So choose an idea to focus on, and then give me five minutes on:

I want to write about . . .

I want to explore . . .

I still don’t understand . . .

I think the reader will learn . . .

By the end I hope that I will . . .

Once you have chosen your subject, you can put it at the centre of another piece of paper and create another map. Then pick one of your bits of content and turn it into a scene: ‘I remember the time when . . .’

Do it as a freewrite and then examine it. What is the balance between explanation and dramatization? Can you add in some detail? Can you use your senses more? How can you put the reader in the room with you? Then try taking off the prompt line. Now you have a scene. Keep working on it. Keep thinking. The more time and focus you commit, the more meaning will float up.

Six-word stories

Here’s a simple yet profound little game that can help with the wrestling. Try telling your story in six words.

I used to have this: ‘I had a brother. He died.’

And then one day, while teaching, as though I was struck by lightning, I realized I could change it to: ‘I have a son. He lives!’

Telling Matt about this game, he said my six-word story for Dear Reader could be: ‘I really, really, really like books.’ I can get Dear Reader down to four words: ‘Life hurts; books help.’

A Manual for Heartache could be: ‘Life is hard but also beautiful’ or ‘Stick around. It is worth it.’

What might yours be? Give me five minutes and make as many as you can.

The Title Game

This is a helpful way to consider your theme and also has the very useful side effect of netting you a working title for your project, if you don’t already have one. Look at these titles and then bend your own story into their shape. I’ve had a go to explain what I mean.

Brideshead Revisited

My Brilliant Friend

Maggie & Me

The Boy with the Topknot

The End of the Affair

The Pursuit of Love

A Year in Provence

Confessions of an Irish Rebel

Cathy’s list for The Last Act of Love:

Snaith Revisited

My Brilliant Brother

Matthew and Me

The Boy who Never Woke Up

The End of Being a Sister

The Pursuit of Not Feeling Completely Shit

A Year in Normandy

Confessions of a Grieving Sister

Cathy’s list for Dear Reader:

Reading Revisited

My Brilliant Bookshelves

Reading and Me

The Girl with the Book Bag

The End of the Chapter (this doesn’t really work but I like the sound of it)

The Pursuit of Life

A Year at Harrods/A Year in France

Confessions of a Professional Reader

You can do this as much as you like. It is a great game to play in a bookshop with a table of memoirs in front of you, or when reading the review section of the Sunday paper. Play it with all the titles on the bestseller lists and imagine that one day you’ll be sitting there among them.

To Plan or Not to Plan

Intention evolves as a result of capacity. You don’t know what you’re doing until you try to do it. As capacity increases so does ambition. But when it comes to getting the work on the page, you can only work breath by breath, line by line.

HILARY MANTEL

There are some rare mortals, like my friends Kit de Waal and Patrick Gale, who plan the whole book out first and don’t start writing until they know what is going to happen. I can’t do this. Even with memoir, where I am in possession of all the facts, I don’t know what I want to write about until I am there at the page. It is categorically not that I think planning is dull or uncreative. I wish I could do it, but I just can’t ever see more than a couple of steps ahead. Sometimes I know the end, or might have a developed idea about the later stages, but I don’t know how I am going to get there. I’m with Maggie O’Farrell, who says that for her, writing is like being in a blizzard. She has to grope her way around, trusting she will find a way through.

The Bin and the Journey

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. DOCTOROW

I once interviewed Chris Anderson, who is the curator of TED Talks. He said that often speakers need help to shape their speeches. They arrive with the contents of a bin and need to transform their ideas into a journey. I love this! In the early stages of the process I am filling up a bin with my content, and then later on I will reconstruct it into a journey for someone else to read. I know that I can’t plan the journey until I know what is in the bin. There is fun to be had here. At the beginning of a project, I think, ‘I’ll just set up a bin and write on bits of paper, and then make them into paper aeroplanes and fly them into my bin and see what I have.’ So far, I have only done this metaphorically, but I fancy giving it an actual go.

To Edit or Not to Edit?

A big pitfall, once we have a bit of writing, is to keep editing it. Oh, the temptation to endlessly work on that first sentence, that first paragraph, that first chapter!

Why is this not a good idea? Because writing is an organic process and we must never underestimate how things will change as we do it. The opening chapter of your finished book may end up being something that hasn’t happened yet or that you haven’t remembered yet or that you don’t yet see as central to the theme you are exploring. So therefore it is a bit pointless to keep perfecting what you currently have. This is like glossing the front door before you’ve even got a set of stairs. You also don’t want to get so committed to it, so in love with the writing, so aghast at the thought of throwing away all that effort, that you can’t be clear-sighted enough to see that you’d be better off with another way in. There’s a saying in poker that you shouldn’t get married to your hand, that is, so keen on your cards that you lose a sense of judgement about how good they are. This works for writing too. You don’t want to get married to certain bits as they may yet need to be sacrificed for the greater good of the work.

It can also be useful to consider the notion of two selves: the writer self and the editor self. The writer self is imaginative and playful. The editor self likes pointing out everything that is wrong with what the writer is doing.

Things the editor self says: ‘That doesn’t even make sense.’ ‘Your grammar is awful.’ ‘That’s hardly an original thought.’ ‘Aren’t you supposed to be doing something else?’ ‘What makes you think you have something to say?’ ‘Hasn’t someone else said this before and better?’

The important thing is not to get so scared by the glorious tangly nature of your creativity that you move too quickly into an editing mindset. You need your editor self, but not yet! What you need now is to tolerate the absence of clarity, and the gap between your aspiration for your project and the multitudinous thoughts buzzing around in your head. Then you can undam yourself and let your ideas flow. Initially this work can be fragile and tender. Don’t expose your green shoots to the harsh sun of attention, even your own.

My writer self is vulnerable, cares what other people think, and wants to create something good. If she is impatient or feels shamed by what is on the page, she is desperately inclined to down tools and give up. What helps me to keep her going is to forbid her to consider quality at this stage. With children, you should praise effort rather than intelligence, and that is what I do with my writer self. I praise her for getting in the chair and writing words. Nothing else matters. I forbid any discussion or speculation about the quality of the words. I tell the editor self that her time will come later, but for now we are just having fun, playing with paper, and getting down some words.

The Pact

Now, I’m going to suggest you make a bargain with yourself.

Anxiety is a threshold emotion. It is supposed to make us pause, to think ‘Something about this is making me uncomfortable,’ so we can then examine it and either move forward or reverse out of it. What we tend to do instead is stay stuck on the threshold, dithering. A way to release ourselves from this stuck state can be to make a bargain.

I suggest you decide: ‘I am going to write my story, but I don’t ever have to show anyone unless I want to.’

Making this agreement means you are liberated from fear and can dive deep into the private pool of creation.

The Death of the Reader: A Different Approach

Usually I try to intentionally forget all about the outside world for the whole first draft, but writing this book has taught me there is another option. And that’s because of you, dear writer. I’ve worked out that it is still important not to imagine a picky, critical, sarcastic reader because I get too nervous. But what I can do is think about a dream reader, and for this book I have you – friendly, intelligent, eager, keen to get to work – very much in mind. It has helped hugely and I have felt less lonely during this process than any other.

So, what is the dream reader like? Not a real person, for me, but a made-up delightful presence who stimulates me and makes me feel most myself. Definitely a cheerleader rather than a sergeant major, but not afraid to ask tough questions or query anything that doesn’t make sense. Who would your dream reader be? They look interested and engaged and want to hear more. They like you just the way you are. They may want you to dig a little deeper, do the work involved in being a bit more honest, but they don’t want you thinking you are not enough. They don’t want your best self – they don’t mind a few warts – but your most self. They care about you, they urge you on. They are on your side as you get grubby and dirty and even bloody in the trenches of writing. They will cheer when you come up. They are waiting for your words. That is the sort of reader you could try having in mind.

Towards a First Draft

I am going to offer you two approaches to writing a first draft.

The first draft of anything is shit.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The excavation draft

The basic principle is that the first draft is just about getting the content down. We put aside all our worries and just get it all out onto the page. It doesn’t have to be in the right order, and we definitely aren’t allowing ourselves to even think about whether or not it is any good. The only job is to get it out. Better out than in, as my pub customers used to say when someone had drunk too much and was being sick. You can also think of excavation as regurgitation. You could call it the vomit draft, if you like, or the zero draft. At this stage it can really help to violently lower our expectations of ourselves.

Deciding where to start isn’t even a first-draft problem. Having a coherent style isn’t a first-draft problem. If you can write it all in the same tense, then that will make the edit easier, but even that isn’t a first-draft problem – you might want to try things out a bit or it might be that it just comes out in that way. You need to regurgitate it. If we don’t write the stuff out of us, it stays stuck inside. You need to know that you can create something honest without shirking. It is important to actually capture it. One of the reasons that drinking was so bad for me was that I wouldn’t when sober address any of my issues, but when I was drunk I would talk endlessly to anyone who would listen. The very fact of being drunk meant I wasn’t really processing anything, just going around in circles. Likewise, in some therapy I’ve had, I felt I was endlessly rehashing the same stuff but without really getting anywhere. With writing, however, there is a real possibility for dealing with our demons by getting them out of us and onto the page. Where do they sit in you? Mine are all dancing around in the churn of my belly. Every dark secret, every act I am ashamed about, every fear sloshes around in there.

Remember, you need to bare it, but you don’t need to share it. Each of my published books has a shadow twin of thousands of words that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Don’t worry about waste. It is only in regurgitating that you can work out where the focus is. And you might use the other stuff for something else. You might start to get glimpses of what your future books might be about. It will all form part of the iceberg from which you will chisel your tip.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

TERRY PRATCHETT

Theme to scene

If you would like a bit more of a guide, a bit of shape, then try this.

Take your mind map of the story of your life. If you feel it captures the content you want to cover, then go with it, or make another one, and in the middle write: ‘My book is about . . .’

Now, have another look. It is probably full of themes or broad-level descriptions of events. What I want you to do is translate everything into at least one scene that would bring it to life. So, if you’ve written ‘New York’, you might add, ‘Argument with the immigration officer who didn’t believe I had somewhere to live.’

Here is a list of my themes and some possible scenes.

Matty’s accident – kneeling in the road/praying in the chapel/the relatives’ room

Education – ‘Isn’t she well-spoken for someone who went to a comprehensive?’

Moving to Cornwall – lying on the floor surrounded by books/walks with Nina

Lockdown – family walks/planting the roses/the coronavirus camellia/crying on the beach

Now, look at your scenes and put them in chronological order. Like magic, isn’t it? Use this as a skeleton plan for your first draft. Write those scenes. Don’t worry about being exhaustive. You can add more later. But this will give you a bit more guidance than the blank page.

All my books have been written the first way, but I invented the second way while teaching and have seen it help my mentees because it gets straight into the action, puts the reader in the physical world, and avoids getting us too bogged down in explanation and interior monologue.

I am keen to try it if I ever do write another memoir. I suspect it would save time, though I still think iceberging is necessary.

A Note on the Hard Stuff

Be brave with it. Be brave with the thing that you are most scared to talk about, that is the thing you need to be able to talk about. There are so many tragedies in you and joys in you that need a voice, and you would be so surprised to see that when you voice that thing that you are so scared of how many people across the world will go, ‘Hey, I feel like that too. Thank you for putting a voice to how I feel.’

NIKITA GILL

I often encounter people who both do and don’t want to tell their stories. They are called to express themselves but want to leave out or gloss over the difficult and painful parts. Ros, who is estranged from her mother, wants to write about her feelings of freedom but not about why the relationship was oppressive. Michelle wants to write about the joy of escape but not her abusive partner. They both feel they’ve wasted enough of their lives on those people and they worry about boring or upsetting the reader. I have huge sympathies in these cases as I was in a similar boat myself, but I did come to see that – if you are writing to be read – the freedom and recovery only make sense if we see what life was like before. In narrative terms, we need the contrast.

So try not to worry about depressing the reader. We do have to find light and shade. We tend to need hope and humour. But these are often not possible to see at the beginning of a project. I would never have dreamt it possible that people would find The Last Act of Love both life-affirming and funny, but they do. Yet if I had aimed for that, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. The way it exists as a finished book is not the way I wrote it. I wrote it all out of order and then edited it into its current structure. I could not have written it any other way, as a lot of the harder stuff to write came earlier on. I could write about the night my brother Matty was knocked over by the car and the first couple of days, but then I found it too hard to track the erosion of hope to despair. Eight years elapsed between the accident and his death, and I couldn’t face them. I hoped I wouldn’t have to, that I could write around it. I’d pasted in newspaper reports, medical reports, extracts from my mother’s diary. I hoped that would be enough, but as I edited it I could see that it wasn’t.

I got stuck. I said to my friend Sarah, ‘I just don’t think I can do it. I wish those eight years hadn’t existed. I wish I had not witnessed them. I wish I had not been alive.’

‘Maybe you could think of it as finding words for those eight years,’ she said. ‘Finding a way to put them down. Maybe that’s what you need to do, hard as it is.’

So I did. And it was hard. But I remain really grateful that I did it. And I did and do feel better and more reconciled with myself now that I have accepted that time and those events as part of my experience, rather than trying to repress and exile them from myself. The writing became integral to my acceptance of myself as a complete person who had travelled a hard path but had survived.

And that’s what I want for Ros and Michelle, and why I – gently and respectfully – urge them to put the pain on the page, because I think that the more honest you can be, the more you can interrogate the self, then the more transformation there is on offer. And you don’t have to share it, remember. This is just the excavation stage. You won’t be putting all this stuff in front of a reader; a little goes a long way with anything distressing and you can make all those editorial decisions later, but dig deep for yourself.

A surprising benefit is that the stuff we are hiding inside us that we think is so dreadful often doesn’t look so bad once it is on the outside and held up to the light. Also, it is trapping other sweeter, lighter memories, so you may well be surprised at what you release alongside your darkest, most shameful secrets.

Love and Compassion

She loved me for the dangers I had passed,

And I loved her that she did pity them.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

You could try loving yourself like Othello and Desdemona love each other. She values his experience, he values her compassion. Writing about difficult things demands courage but may bring rewards, as the increased awareness can often invite a softening towards ourselves and others, and it can be – eventually – a great relief and release to put our baggage down and view ourselves with a compassionate friendliness.

Towards the end of writing The Last Act of Love, I came across the word ‘kintsugi’. This is a Japanese style of ceramics where, if you have a broken object, you mend it with gold so that the damage is an inherent and valued part of its history, not something to be hidden or brushed over. This is such a beautiful and helpful metaphor, for writing and for life.

A Working Proposal

A proposal is what an agent would use to sell your book to a publisher, and it can be useful before setting sail on the draft to make yourself one to act as a guide. Don’t worry about anyone seeing it at this stage. It is just for you and will be fun to look back on. It only needs to be a page or two. Put your working title, then a paragraph about what you hope to explore in the draft. You can use the prompts from here to help you. If you have a list of scenes, include that. Then stick it in your notebook or on your wall.

We’re Nearly Ready. Any Questions?

How long should my excavation draft be?

As long as you like. I don’t aim for a full-length book all in one go. I’m inclined to say things like, ‘I’m going to write for two hours, Monday to Thursday, for a month,’ or ‘I want to have 20,000 words by September.’ Make sure it’s achievable for you. What I did with The Last Act of Love was pledge to write 5,000 words a month from August to December, without worrying about what order they were in or whether they were any good. I know other writers who aim to get the whole thing done in a certain amount of time, so experiment to find your way.

How do I know if I’m doing it right?

You don’t, really. I know writers who say that a feeling of enjoyment is a good sign, but that doesn’t hugely work for me as a measure. I have learnt to trust that the process is mysterious and divine beyond the comprehension of my human brain. I don’t need to be putting all my energy into puzzling it out, I can just surrender. As long as I turn up at the page, the rest will sort itself out.

I still feel I don’t know enough

That’s the point really, to find out what you need by doing the writing. That’s how it works for me. I do a bit and then things start to clunk into place, on the page and in my head. It helps me to think of it like doing a jigsaw. I start with a mass of pieces but the more I do, the more I can see how it fits together.

I really think I’d be better off with a plan

OK then, make one. Some people work better that way. You can always come back and try this if it doesn’t pan out.

Right, I’m in. I’ve set my target. What do I do when I’ve finished?

I like to print it out, tie it up with a ribbon or put it in a box or a drawer, and then leave it to breathe for at least a week and not more than a month. Then celebrate! Have fun. It doesn’t have to be grand. I used to get drunk, but these days I go for a run or a swim, or take my family out for a meal. I might have a lie-in, or even a whole day in bed with a book. I turn my computer off and let my brain rest. The important thing is to honour your effort and stay in celebration mode. You did it, you lovely writer. Mark your calendar for when you’ll go back in and then forget about it as much as you can. Do something else. Write a short story or go on a reading jag or take up a new hobby.

What if I don’t want to stop when I reach my target?

Carry on! It’s like the timer. You have to do five minutes but you don’t have to stop there. If you are in the flow, then just keep going until you’ve finished or it feels right to have a break. I’ve never written a book all in one go, but you might be able to. Go for it.

What if I put it in a drawer but keep having ideas?

I make another document or use a big sheet of flipchart paper to capture anything that floats up. I don’t allow myself to mess with the original. I think it is important to let it rest.

What if I get a new idea? Can I work on that?

By all means. This does happen. As we tame our preoccupations and birth them – no matter how messily – we make room for the next thing. So go for it, but don’t force it. I wouldn’t go full throttle. Play around if that feels right, but unless it truly feels like a joy, you might be better served by a rest.

Good luck!

Commitment Pledge

Right, the moment has arrived! It might help to prepare with these prompts:

I want to write this book because . . .

What blocks me is . . .

My strategy for dealing with this is . . .

I might also try . . .

And for now I am just not going to think about . . .

I am going to focus on . . .

My commitment for getting the work done is . . .

My pact with myself is . . .

I can chunk up the work by . . .

Are there practical things I can do in advance to set it up well?

Anything fun?

So, tomorrow/next week I am going to . . .

The Memoir Equation Revisited

You + your experience + commitment = first draft

PART THREE

Crafting and Editing

Fun Things

I often find it helpful to come at my work from a curious or playful angle, or from a different perspective. These are all off-the-page activities that might stimulate you at any point of the process.

Playlist

Make a list of all the songs that feature in your memoir. Music is very evocative. I couldn’t write with it on as I’d be too distracted – but you might be different. Be careful about using song lyrics in your book, though, as it costs a fortune! I often find my mentees want to extensively quote song lyrics and then explain their reactions to them. Better to use music for inspiration, to allow you to travel back to your former self, than to put too much of it on the page.

Chronology

Make a table of events and have columns for things that might be useful or inspiring, like world events, sports fixtures, music concerts, etc. This is useful to double-check when and where relevant events happened, but can also throw up new avenues of exploration.

Crime scene noticeboard

You know those detective programmes where they have victim photos and maps? I have one for every book. I call it putting my book on the wall, and I have learnt to anticipate and enjoy the ritual of taking it back down when I’ve finished, and clearing the space for something new.

Shoebox

I keep a box for every book in which I collect things that feel useful at the time, even if I don’t know why. I chuck stuff in, and every so often I go through it, and it sparks a new thought or reminds me of something I’ve forgotten.

Field trip

Go to visit one of the locations in your story. Walk the streets and try to connect to your former self. Look at all the places you have been. Have they changed or stayed the same? How could you describe them for your reader? This journey might end up in your book or might just be background. If you can’t physically go, you could explore on Google Earth.

Buy a present for your younger self

I bought my seventeen-year-old self a pair of purple Dr Martens, which was a really helpful and lovely way to connect with her. What could you gift to your younger self? What would you have liked or what did you need that you didn’t get at the time?

Visualization

Bernardine Evaristo imagined herself winning the Booker Prize and then she did! Visualization is a powerful tool, and it is really just like daydreaming. I tend not to focus on concrete achievements but just on getting the work done. I picture myself standing next to the printer smiling as my first draft spills out of it, or pressing send to my editor. As I go to sleep, I imagine myself the next morning looking eager and well as I make a coffee and settle down at my desk with my writing mug.

Make a mood or vision board

Collect images either digitally or on paper and make them into a collage. You can do this for a book or for yourself more generally. I made one of writing spaces. It is a thing of beauty with lots of cabins, woodland, nature, sea and a lighthouse. I realized that rather than wasting time grumbling about being stuck in my house, I could look at my board and mentally transport myself to wherever I wanted to be.

Design your book jacket

I love it when I get my cover design during the last stage of writing. I stick it up on the wall and it propels me through the final stages. You could design your own. This could be as simple as a piece of A4 paper on which you write the title and your name, or you could get wildly creative. Look at memoirs that use photographs on the cover. What photos would you choose for your book?

Imagine your book as a film

Who would play you? It can be both fun and stimulating to cast your memoir. And it might reveal that you are running with too many characters . . .

Take your narrative problem out for a walk

Go out with no phone or book and only enough money for a coffee, and just walk around.

Do some manual labour

Get right away from your computer and paint a wall or do some gardening. Allow the mind to wander.

Do a jigsaw

I don’t fully understand why, but doing jigsaws really helps when I am a bit stuck. It is so reassuring to go from complete chaos to something that makes sense. And the moment when I see that two big chunks will fit together is wonderful. Perhaps I benefit in the same way that Hercule Poirot does when he builds houses from playing cards while puzzling out a mystery. Like him, I often have revelations.

Acknowledgements

If your book is published you’ll need to write a page of thank yous. Start them now. It might help you to imagine your book as a finished thing and to feel grateful for all the support you get. And it will be useful for when you do it for real!

Epigraphs

These are quotes that authors use between the title page and first chapter, or at the beginning of a chapter, that are intended to summarize the purpose or message of the book, or give a hint of what is to come. Keep an eye out for possible epigraphs and write them in your notebook or stick them up on a wall. I often change my mind about what to use as the book progresses, though I always knew I wanted that Maya Angelou quote for this one!

Going Back In

There will be no salvageable parts of a first draft if there is no first draft. Embrace the sloppy copy. It’s probably trash, but it’s your trash.

HIRON ENNES

The day has arrived to go back to your draft. Oh, my dear writer, I wish I could sit next to you as we look at it together.

Breathe. Then breathe some more. You might feel excited and terrified. I get in such a state before going back to a draft that I often can’t sleep and chew my fingers half off. Then I remember it will serve me to run off my anxiety with exercise and give myself a little pep talk like this:

‘You have done a really good job to get to this place. Remember that this is tricky for most writers; it feels a bit like going back to a congealed meal. You know you need the distance but then you get the bends on re-entry. Take time to refamiliarize yourself. Do your first reading without a pen in your hand and don’t try to edit it. Just read it with a kind eye. Get to know it. Don’t sink into perfectionism or criticism. Imagine it has not been written by you but by someone you really like.’

Rather than ‘This is shit,’ try to think, ‘This needs some work.’ You may well ricochet between feelings of elation and despair. Just breathe through it all.

When you’ve finished, make some notes if you like, but you might not be ready. Go for a walk. You might feel panicked at the scale of the task ahead, but try to feel excited that you will learn new things, that this is all part of the process.

This bit is hard, trying to get a handle on how to close the gap between your draft and the finished book. Stay calm. Or scream at the trees and punch some cushions. But don’t get bogged down again in thinking it should be easier and that you might not be talented enough. Take lots of deep breaths.

I always panic when I go back to a draft. Even when I can see that lots of it is good, I feel overwhelmed at how much there is to do. The first draft of my novel scared me so much that I wrote two other books before I could summon the will to carry on. So know that these disturbances are all steps on the journey. What we need to do is trust this enough so that we can look at the work in a clear-sighted way, concentrate and make it better. When we calm our nervous system, our brain will start functioning again and then we can get to work. Chill out, calm down, commit. You are ready to edit. You might want to make another commitment pledge. Just change the first line: ‘I want to edit my book because . . .’

Here are some I did for this book:

I want to edit this book because . . .

I do really want to do it. There are lots of bits that I know are really good. I’m excited about wrestling all my thoughts on the subject into one place and feeling clearer. And I hope it will be empowering and helpful for other people.

What blocks me is . . .

Oh, the usual. Feeling confused about the structure and how to organize it. Worrying that I don’t have anything new to say. Worrying that it won’t come across on the page as well as it does in real life. Niggly things like how to use quotes, and what the exercise-to-prose balance should be, and how the material should flow, and wanting to have all that sorted before I start editing. Practical stuff like having lots of other work and domestic commitments, and it being half-term next week.

My strategy for dealing with this is . . .

Well, writing other books has taught me that I always feel like this and that I will only find answers in doing it. Action cures fear. I need to remind myself that confusion is the gateway to knowledge. Can I rebrand my confusion as curiosity? Can I remind myself that I will start learning and enjoying new things as I start doing it?

I might also try . . .

Worrying less about Matt. It does neither of us any good.

And for now I am just not going to think about . . .

Whether or not it is any good. I am going to park all questions of quality, all desire for praise and fear of censure.

For the next stage of my project I am going to focus on . . .

Editing everything that I’ve got into a linear draft.

My commitment for getting the work done is . . .

I’ll work on it every morning next week.

My pact with myself is . . .

Just do it. No more overthinking. Just get the next draft ready.

I can chunk up the work by . . .

I’ll decide and commit to working in weekly chunks from now until Christmas. I’ll start on Sunday afternoon and write down exactly what I am going to do.

Are there practical things I can do in advance to set it up well?

Keep mornings clear. Re-commit to no email before midday. The night before, move Outlook so I don’t see it in the dock. Write in my planner that I am going to do two hours of editing every day and then tick it off.

Anything fun?

I can light a new candle.

So, next week I am going to . . .

Edit my writing book every morning.

How do I feel about that?

Good! Looking forward to it. I have a lot to say and will feel great once I am going again and can build up momentum.

The Structural Edit

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

Hold onto your hats! If I had to pin down what you need to write a memoir, it is this: a willingness to work really hard to tolerate the confusion and go to all the dark places to write a first draft. And then the discipline and stamina to cross lots of it out, to interrogate every scene and ask what it is adding to the whole, and to be able to rework all the material in service to the story and the reader. This is big stuff and needs deep breaths.

First I look for possibility. Virginia Woolf talked about finding the ‘diamonds of the dustheap’ with her own work, and that’s what I try to look for when reading a draft. What is working? What do I want more of? Does anything surprise me? Can I underline a few good lines? Can I pull a couple of quotes and stick them on the wall or in my notebook? Is my working title still right or should I adjust it?

Then there are a whole lot of things I need to get rid of. This excavation draft can feel like a very messy building site. There are piles of bricks and bits of scaffolding everywhere. There are puddles in the tarpaulins where it has rained. It is hard to see that it will ever be the beautiful mansion of my dreams, but I have to get to work and sort it job by job, because if I try to do it all at the same time I go mad. I ignore the language until I have sorted the structure, as there is no point editing the dialogue in a scene I might cut. When I come back after a rest I am clunky and can’t find my way around, but I apply myself roughly in this order, though there is some overlap.

The content

Have I said everything I want to say? Am I missing anything? I probably have too many tentacles and will need to lop some off before beefing up the rest. There will be lots of repetition but I ignore it for the moment, along with the clumsy phrasing and typos. I’m not glossing the front door yet; I’m still trying to work out how to make it a functioning abode and whether or not I really need that swimming pool or the gazebo. This stage is the longest and hardest for me and the bit I wish I could outsource to someone who thinks in a different way.

Voice and tone

Is there too much editorializing, philosophizing and bossing the reader around? Do I sound like I’m campaigning or obsessed with an agenda? It is not a bad thing to have an objective of public education, but unless your book is supposed to be a polemic, this tends to be most effective when lightly worn. Where my voice falters, it is probably because I’m not sure about what I’m trying to say. I always have some sections that are tonally adrift. Chunks of angry cynicism, perhaps, written on a grey day. Good that I bared them, but I don’t have to share them.

Decluttering

There’s good stuff but it is buried by everything else. Too much explanation, too many long words and fancy descriptions, too many characters, too many tangents, and too much going on. Am I saying the same thing twice but just in a different way? What do I need to get rid of? Maybe the swimming pool doesn’t belong here after all. I like the pattern on these tiles but have to accept it doesn’t fit the style of the rest of the house. I don’t delete the cuts but save them for future use. Kit de Waal calls this file ‘Scraps of Genius’, which does make it easier to accept that we have just given the very attractive summer house the heave-ho.

And then, and then, and then

There will be some dull parts, because I will have fallen into the trap of thinking I need to write down every single detail.

Balance between explanation and dramatization

I’ll have too much interior monologue, too much backstory, too many facts. I’ll need to remind myself I’m telling a story rather than compiling a police report, and think about what I need to cut and what I need to turn into a scene rather than just telling it.

That big thing I witnessed

I may have a few impassioned pages about social injustice, or something distressing I have witnessed. I need to remind myself that I’m not writing ‘the life and times of myself and everything I was interested in ever’ and keep my actual subject front and centre. I see this in the early work of my mentees: the sudden death of a classmate, finding out a friend was being abused, meeting a Holocaust survivor, where they were during 9/11. If it isn’t relevant to the story, it needs to go to the Scraps of Genius file.

Too much ongoing daily life

If a book is largely about events in the past, then most of the reader’s attention needs to be there. I tend to pour my daily life into my manuscript and then cut out most of what resembles diary later. My first drafts are full of this sort of thing: ‘I was listening to the radio and I heard someone talking about Scunthorpe and I remembered back to the time when . . .’ Of course we are stimulated by our surroundings, but when I am editing I chop most of this out. We don’t need to share what made us think about the thing; we need to focus on the thing itself.

Too many cultural references

Often, quotes from books, TV shows and songs have sparked an idea in me. ‘You know that bit in Friends where Ross and Rachel are splitting up and Chandler can’t cope? Well, I felt exactly like that when . . .’ Or, ‘As Michel Faber explores in The Crimson Petal and the White, the thing with trauma is that . . .’ The problem here is that it can be distancing if your reader doesn’t understand your references, and too much of it feels scattergun. You can have a bit of this, but most people need to reduce the balance downwards and bear in mind that it all dates very quickly. A big part of growing into your voice is feeling sufficiently confident to tell us what you think, not what other people think.

Scaffolding

There are things that help you write the draft but can come out afterwards. I am very honoured when I appear as a character in the memoirs of the people I mentor. It is fascinating and flattering to see myself rendered on the page, but I always suggest they edit me out because I know I am scaffolding. It’s great that I helped them get it all down, but now I am one character too many and need to hit the cutting room floor.

Reflections about writing and the story of writing the book

A little of this will go a long way. My first drafts are full of self-doubt, thoughts like ‘Who am I to think I have something to say?’ ‘What a vile, miserable sinner I am,’ and all the long, dark-night-of-the-soul stuff I’ve endured while writing. I take almost all of this out and so should you. Don’t undermine yourself with the reader. If someone is telling you a story, do you want them to keep stopping to say how boring and awful they are?

Defensiveness

A lot of modern memoir is a bit defensive. You can see the author is doing this because they are imagining people being cross with them on Twitter. I am a huge people-pleaser and perfectionist, but I have enjoyed my writing a lot more since I dug into this and calmed my need to never fall short. These days I am quite happy that I won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. The danger is that we become bland in the pursuit of being all things to all readers, that we are miserly in what we give of ourselves if we are frightened of being judged.

Therapy speak

Therapy is endlessly fascinating to me, but even I find it tedious on the page when a writer is offering their therapist’s interpretation of events or using professional jargon: ‘My mother was a classic narcissist and that’s why . . .’ Show us instead.

Swearing

I adore swearing, but you diminish its power if you use it too much. Get rid of the bloodys and the damns and treat yourself to the occasional cunt.

From bin to journey

When I’m done with the scissors, it is time to ask myself: Is it all in the right order? How do I need to shuffle it around? I need to imagine a reader now, if I’m not already. I’m starting the handover process where my private interrogations will become a reading experience.

Finding the skewer

Here is another tip from Agent Jo. There comes a time in the draft where all the little chunks, the bits of red pepper, onion and courgette, are nicely done but the skewer isn’t quite in place. What is your skewer? What is holding it all together? At this stage you might want to replay the title game or the six-word story game. Once you are sure about the skewer, you can also be a bit more ruthless about getting rid of the gazebos and swimming pools and putting them in the Scraps of Genius file.

Am I sure I want to share this?

This is the point where I check that I am happy for these revelations to go out into the world. The quickest way to do this is to imagine yourself reading it all aloud on stage. If you are not writing to share, then you don’t have to bother with this, of course. It can be a bit bruising, and if you want to cut too much then maybe let it have a rest for a week first.

MVP

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

STEPHEN KING

I learnt this from the world of business via my friend John, who has a telecoms company. A few years ago, I was crying on his shoulder about how stuck I was with Dear Reader. He was aghast that I didn’t have a plan or a critical path and that I had no idea whether it would take me weeks or months. He said I was trying to do too much at once, that I needed to chunk it up a bit, that I was letting perfect be the enemy of just getting it done. He told me that tech developers aim for MVP – minimum viable product; the version with the fewest bells and whistles that does the basic job, which you can then tweak and hone and perfect. John suggested I stop trying to write a really good book and just focus on completing the MVP. This really helped me finish Dear Reader and I have now incorporated it as a stage: after the excavation draft comes the MVP. It is still only a shadow of its future self, but it functions, it is all in the right place. This is one of my favourite moments of the whole process, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief when it is done. From here on I enjoy myself, and no longer suffer the existential peaks and troughs of the excavation or the structural edit.

The Line Edit

You need to think about every word in every sentence at least ten times.

SEBASTIAN FAULKS

Once everything is in the right place, I pay closer attention. Here are some practical editing examples:

I was walking along the road on my way to pick up my son from school this afternoon noticing that spring was in the air and I saw a black VW Beetle and it reminded me of Sophie and that time we decided to skive off from uni in Leeds and go on a road trip to the coast.

Edit out the ‘me in the now’ and put the reader in the room:

One morning I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window. She was looking at the daffodils in next door’s garden. She said that spring was here and that it would seem a shame to spend all day cooped up in a classroom. She waved her car keys at me. She had that glint in her eye I could never resist.

I like the daffodils here rather than the vaguer ‘spring was in the air’. I don’t need the car. It’s done its job in reminding me of the scene. I might mention it later when we are on the road. Now I’ve got four sentences starting with ‘she’ – I can fix that and make it a bit livelier by putting in some dialogue.

One morning I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘spring is here.’

We stood together admiring the daffodils in next door’s garden.

‘It seems a shame to spend the day cooped up in a classroom,’ Sophie said, picking up her car keys and smiling at me. She had that glint in her eye I could never resist.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

Cut tangents that slow the story down:

One morning I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘spring is here.’

We stood together admiring the daffodils in next door’s garden.

We didn’t know our neighbours and assumed they disliked having students living next door, as they were grumpy and generally ignored us.

‘It seems a shame to spend the day cooped up in a classroom,’ Sophie said, picking up her car keys and smiling at me. She had that glint in her eye I could never resist.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

Unless the neighbours have a role to play in future events, get rid of them. Yes, they may highlight a ‘town and gown’ tension, but unless that is what your memoir is about, it is just distracting.

Avoid too many time shifts where the ‘me in the now’ gets involved:

One morning I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘spring is here.’

We stood together admiring the daffodils in next door’s garden. We didn’t know our neighbours and assumed they disliked having students living next door, as they were grumpy and generally ignored us. He was very tall and she was very small. They seemed ancient to me at the time but they were probably not that much older than I am now.

‘It seems a shame to spend the day cooped up in a classroom,’ Sophie said, picking up her car keys and smiling at me. She had that glint in her eye I could never resist.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

No! Get out of the way. Let us stay in the kitchen in Leeds. Don’t break the suspension of disbelief. Keep us in one time frame and take us on the road trip.

Keep your perspective:

One morning I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘spring is here.’

We stood together admiring the daffodils in next door’s garden.

Sophie thought it was a shame to spend the day cooped up in a classroom so she decided to try to lead me astray.

She picked up her car keys and smiled at me. She had that glint in her eye I could never resist.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

We don’t want that drift into Sophie’s thoughts.

Be wary of creating an unintentionally sinister tone:

One morning I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘spring is here.’

We stood together admiring the daffodils in next door’s garden.

We didn’t know our neighbours and assumed they disliked having students living next door, as they were grumpy and generally ignored us. He was very tall and she was very small. He was definitely in charge of things and she had a frightened look about her. He spent a lot of time digging the garden and I’d even seen him out there late at night.

‘It seems a shame to spend the day cooped up in a classroom,’ Sophie said, picking up her car keys and smiling at me. She had that glint in her eye I could never resist.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

Unless your memoir is about the time you lived next door to a serial killer, get rid of this. We are now more interested in the neighbours than in Sophie and the road trip.

Or an unintentionally romantic tone:

One morning my heart lifted when I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘spring is here.’

I watched her admiring the daffodils in next door’s garden. I loved the way her black hair rose from her forehead.

‘It seems a shame to spend the day cooped up in a classroom,’ Sophie said, picking up her car keys and smiling at me. She had that glint in her beautiful blue eyes I could never resist. I would have followed her to the ends of the earth.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

Unless I am trying to show that I am in love with Sophie, this is probably excessive.

Have you got too much explanation and backstory?:

I remember the time when Sophie and I went on a road trip. She was the first person I met at university and we became friends straight away. All through the first year we lived together in student flats, and then we moved into a house for our second year. We knew each other well by then and had visited each other’s family homes. She lived in London which was all new to me, so busy and bustling. I liked the way she hailed a taxi by stepping into the street. I’m still friends with her now. I had my train ticket booked to go and visit her, and then the virus happened and we had to cancel. Anyway, this one time we were looking out of the kitchen window at the daffodils next door and decided to . . .

So tedious! And jumping about in time. The only good line is about the taxi. I’ll keep that for future use and cut everything else. Do a keyword search for ‘anyway’, and you’ll find that the bit before it is almost always a digression.

Be sparing with dialogue tags and adverbs:

One morning I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window.

‘Look,’ she opined softly, ‘spring is here.’

We stood together admiring the daffodils in next door’s garden.

‘It seems a shame to spend the day cooped up in a classroom,’ Sophie cried invitingly, picking up her car keys and smiling at me. She had that glint in her eye I could never resist.

‘OK,’ I submitted gracefully. ‘Where shall we go?’

I promise that simpler tends to be better. A lot of people were taught in school that ‘said’ is a boring choice. It’s not. You want to aim to let the dialogue speak for itself rather than excessively explain it.

What is the best version?

One morning I came downstairs to see Sophie by the kitchen window.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘spring is here.’

We stood together admiring the daffodils in next door’s garden.

‘We’re not going to spend today cooped up in a classroom, are we?’ Sophie asked, picking up her car keys. She had that glint in her eye I could never resist.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’

There. I’ve got rid of ‘seems’ because I overuse it in general and find it too tentative. Turning Sophie’s line of dialogue into a question feels more dynamic. I can also get rid of the smiling which felt unnecessary and maybe not quite right, and there is a tiny hint of tension without it. Now we are ready to set off.

The Polish: Gold Dust and Sparkle

Now it is all about making your writing better, and I love this stage. If I can get a bit of distance by putting the manuscript away for a week, I will. I will also try changing the font, which is a good way to trick the mind into thinking it hasn’t seen it before. I look for hesitation, repetition and deviation, and get rid of them all. I question every adjective and every adverb. I keep one eye on the sentence structure; I’m tempted to edit this page because too many sentences start with ‘I’, but it is a bit like a list so I will leave it as is. I read it aloud chapter by chapter, and if I stumble, I know I need to clarify. I’ll have good ideas for new bits or will be able to see that something I cut can now go back in. I read it aloud again and imagine my dream reader on the sofa next to me. She nods, she smiles. If she frowns, I know I need to tweak. I am nearly there. I am getting closer every day, and progress is fast and furious now. It all makes sense! I can hold everything in my head and see that a line in Chapter Four will do better in Chapter Nine. I will wake up in the night knowing that I want to change one specific word, or with a complete line of dialogue to slot in.

Eventually I will start to get a bit bored. But I do push on and have another couple of read-throughs. When I start taking commas out and putting them back in again, I know I’m done. It’s important now to celebrate. What an achievement!

PART FOUR

Getting Work Done

A Room of Your Own?

When I started getting real work done, I realized how much easier it is to write than not to write. Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I’ve ever encountered. It takes it out of you. It’s very psychically wearing not to write – I mean if you’re supposed to be writing.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

Virginia Woolf said that a writer needed a room of her own, but I think physical space is less important in the twenty-first century than mental space. The single most important thing for me is to carve out time in which I deny myself access to the internet, especially social media.

I don’t look at the socials on my laptop and I leave my phone switched off downstairs most of the time, and usually take the apps off it. It was much more difficult to be disciplined when I lived in a flat and there were no stairs to use as an obstacle. My friend Kat puts her phone in a box that locks itself between certain hours, and I think if I lived in a small space I’d get one of those. The main thing is that you need to take it seriously as a threat to your creativity. It does seem ridiculous that a tiny rectangle can be so destructive, but I absolutely cannot concentrate on long-form work if I have allowed my attention to be hijacked. This isn’t about literal time but about the impact. A ‘quick’ check of Twitter detonates a bomb in my brain. Partly it is the problem of getting high on the lights, bells and love hearts of social media, wanting more attention and wanting it right now! I want to be seen and loved! If I can get that immediately, why should I bother going to the effort of writing words in private when they may never see the light of day and, even if they do, it will be months or years in the future? That’s too long to wait!

I’m also wrecked by the exposure to suffering. If I was writing in my house and someone screamed in the street, I would put down my pen and run out to help. The news and Twitter make me feel like I can hear the screams of millions because there is always something bad happening somewhere. We have continual access to other people’s terrible woes just a click away, but without the ability to run to help, so I get into a frozen, paralysed state where I can’t do anything, but nor can I take any interest in my own projects, which are all dwarfed by what I have just witnessed.

Twitter is great for thick-skinned activists and terrible for delicate flowers. If I see a writer being shamed for something, I want to curl up into a ball and never speak again. Then there is the common or garden pettiness and silly behaviour which makes me feel a bit sick, and puts me in danger of losing the faith in humanity that I know is essential to my survival. And if I’m at the part of the writing process where I like to imagine an intelligent and perceptive reader, I am more likely to get the impression that the world is full of opinionated gobshites.

Also: compare and despair! There is always someone with a more interesting life, or who looks like they are doing a better job of parenting, or making more of a contribution in the world.

Twitter makes me jealous, judgemental and jittery, and immediately chucks me so many balls that I can’t keep them all in the air. Pretty soon I am dizzy and I collapse in a heap, like a depressed juggler lying on the ground surrounded by all the different shaped objects – some on fire – that I have not been able to control. The 4D animated jigsaw that swarms around my head is hard enough to tame already, without introducing other stuff.

So, have dominion over your own mind. Choose who you let into your space and when. Allow the butterflies and bees to flit around in the garden of your imagination without being gassed.

Whether or not you have a room of your own, don’t allow technology to take it over. Stop letting all those angry voices onto your pillow with you! Reclaim your space!

Time and Habit

Forget about inspiration and get into the habit of writing every day. Habit has written far more books than inspiration has. If you want the Muse to visit you, she needs to know where you are: so stay at your desk.

PHILIP PULLMAN

Writing a book is such a huge endeavour, and it is frighteningly easy to become so overwhelmed by the scale of it that we are unable to do the necessary work of putting one word in front of another. One of the key things that transformed me from someone who wanted to write into someone who finished a book was learning how to chunk up time.

The problem is that it never really matters what you do on any given day. And it doesn’t matter that much if you do nothing for two days in a row. Or three . . . But if you never do anything, it will become a problem. At some point it will matter because you’ll get to six months or a year and you’ll have nothing, but it is very difficult to see where one state of affairs becomes the other. So I stopped thinking in terms of a whole book and instead only allow myself to think in blocks of two hours.

Then I need to decide ahead exactly what I am going to do in those hours. I am often working on two big projects and also have journalism or a book review on the boil. If I haven’t decided in advance, then I can exhaust myself by dithering and being unable to make up my mind when I arrive at the desk.

I like variety, so I will tinker with my regime. At the moment I am deciding by the week. On Sunday afternoons I have a half-hour session where I decide which project I am going to commit to, and then write it down in my diary. Each day, I tick off everything I have done and add in the ascending word count or the amount of editing time. It is important to feel pleased and happy that I have done my two hours rather than allow myself to dwell on how much is still to do or question whether or not I have made actual progress. I give myself the weekend off; I can scribble things on Post-its if I must, but I don’t allow myself to open the computer. Often I will want to, but I’ve learnt it is crucial that I have time for guilt-free rest. Then on Sunday afternoon I re-commit.

I think this would also work if I was doing a regular job. I could look at the week ahead and decide it is just too busy, and I’ll do my morning pages but leave it at that. Then the following week I could get up at 5 a.m. for three days. I was working more than full time when I wrote The Last Act of Love, and I did it in two-hour diarized chunks in cafes with my phone turned off and buried at the bottom of my bag. I also spent all my holidays on it for a year and a half. I think I gave myself Christmas Day off, but that was it.

So start small and build credibility with yourself. Devise a regular routine and stick to it. Spend plenty of time working it out. Do flex it but don’t give up. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Remember that the desire for perfection is the enemy of action, so let’s lower our expectations of the quality of our writing – for now. Schedule in rest and periods of time when you are not asking anything of your brain so it can idle and tick over.

Try not to succumb to compare and despair when you read about other writers who wrote their books in a cabin in a wood, or a magnificent writing shed in their own garden. It is not about having perfect conditions, it is about investigating and interrogating your own situation and working out how to find your own path.

Can you take public transport so you can write on your commute? Could you record yourself in your car or at least use it as thinking time rather than listening to news? Do you want your workplace to own you? There have been times when I have been enslaved by my work email. I thought it was crucial, but now I think it was not only unnecessary but also bad for my health and, ultimately, for my work, as I lost my freshness and creativity. We all need rest.

I’m an early morning writer but I know plenty of people who write through the night. I’d just be too tired, and I’d spend the whole day feeling sick and churned up that I might not do it. Writing functions like anti-anxiety medication for me. If I take my two-hour pill of it every morning, then I have much more chance of enjoying the rest of the day. Of course, if my situation was different it might be trickier to fit in, though I think that if I had to leave for work at 6 a.m., I’d be trying to get up at 4 a.m. rather than leaving it until later.

If your hands are busy, can you let your mind roam free? I used to be extremely grumpy about domestic chores, and then I read that Agatha Christie used to work out her plots while doing the washing up, and decided to rebrand all my domestic activity as thinking time.

Can you be creative with time? If I schedule chores or errands after writing, I will often have really good ideas while folding the laundry or in the queue at the supermarket, especially if I keep off my phone and spend more time in silence.

I tend not to ask anyone to read my work in progress. Lots of people do get encouragement from writing groups, but I find it muddies the water at this stage if I start thinking about real-life responses. So unless you have an established process I’d be wary. And be careful about family and romantic partners. A good service I did for one of my mentees was to stop her having a few glasses of wine and then reading her latest chapter aloud to her teetotal husband, and getting cross that he didn’t respond as enthusiastically as she wanted.

Deadlines are motivating. It is a useful strategy to have an accountability partner. You can use a friend, child or a professional to help you keep to your targets. If it is a family member, it can have the added benefit of making them feel involved. During lockdown, I’d say to Matt, ‘I need to go upstairs and write for two hours. I want to do a thousand words and I must not look at the internet. Will you help me by being my accountability partner? That means you have to ask me how I’ve got on and then tell me well done.’ He liked being empowered to boss me around, and I found I was better able to stay focused if I’d promised him I would.

‘Job and knock’ is what my dad would say to his men when he was down the mine. If they worked hard and got the task done, then they could go home straight away rather than wait until the end of the shift. I often play this on Fridays: 1,000 words and I can call it a day and have a treat. The brain likes treats but it doesn’t really matter what they are. My Friday treat is a bath with a book. I have trained myself to get excited over a new box of assorted herbal teabags, with the promise of a different one after every session. I have special writing mugs and I start to look forward to using one. Trick your brain. Tell it that time away from the desk is a reward. When I’ve done this, I can choose between going running or going to the supermarket. What a thrill!

Tracking can be fun and the brain loves it. When you tick off what you’ve done, draw a love heart too. Move a pebble from one jar to another at the end of every session. You’ll start to look forward to the noise of that little chink as it joins the others. Light a scented candle that you are only allowed to burn while writing. Feel satisfied and congratulate yourself as you blow out your candle. You did it. You turned up at the page. Keep doing that and trust that the rest will sort itself out.

I write in bursts and chunks and then have time off. I still hope to find a perfect way. But maybe I need to accept that there is no perfect way and what I have is good enough. I do fantasize about a communal writing situation where I sit in a room with other people, all of us beavering away and then having lunch together. This is probably a library!

A Note on Drinking

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

I have been sober since 2017. There were times in my life when I not only drank to great excess but I tried to write while drunk or hungover. I never finished anything. I did still drink during the making of my first two books, but I had to stop every time I was finishing up a draft, as I could neither ration my intake nor work with a fuzzy brain. This sobriety sampling meant I learnt how nice it was not to be hungover all the time, and I enjoyed being liberated from the misery of attempting to moderate. For me it is far easier to have none than some. I have made the big step of accepting I’m powerless against alcohol, and as long as I don’t start questioning the decision, the rest is simple. I just don’t drink.

I am not telling you this to be a killjoy, dear writer, or to try to influence your habits. I have plenty of friends who use alcohol in a way that doesn’t negatively affect their lives. But for years I had swallowed that pernicious myth that creative types are supposed to be down the pub at all hours, and I now think this is nonsense. Writing is hard and demands our full resources. I have been much happier since I stopped trying to do it while half-cut.

On a related point, I feel like a twat suggesting to the wider world – to people who work in pubs and shops and down mines and on oil rigs – that writing is tiring, but it is! Writing will demand a lot, so you need to look after your whole self. Eat well, get fresh air and do some yoga. Be match fit.

When Times Are Tough

As for life’s little difficulties, they are myriad. What writer hasn’t had to work with a toothache, with bills due, with a baby sick in the next room or in the same room, with the in-laws visiting, or at the end of a love affair, or with the government demanding the filling out of endless forms?

PATRICIA HIGHSMITH

It is to be expected in any writing journey. If we are down the mine, we will get broken drill bits and sudden floods. If we imagine writing a book as a voyage, then our sails will need mending and we will encounter rough weather.

I used to down tools when upset by external events, but I have learnt to flex and challenge my preconceptions. I used to say there was no point in me even trying to write in the house when Matt was awake because I was too aware of him and his needs, that the mother and writer parts of my brain did not play nicely together. Then the coronavirus happened and my choices were narrowed down to two: not write at all, or learn to do it near him. Initially I allowed myself to think that I couldn’t concentrate. The novel I’d been working on seemed irrelevant, and I gave in to watching lots of news and being infected by panic and pointless extrapolations. I didn’t want to go out for my daily exercise allowance. All I could do was lie on the sofa and eat ice cream.

After a few days of this, I started to feel really low and realized I had to take action before sliding further down my mental health staircase. I told my husband Erwyn I had to stop watching the news, so could he just give me daily highlights on a need-to-know basis. I got up early the next day and went running, and then asked both Erwyn and Matt to help me plan a writing schedule that would fit in with our lives. I explained to Matt that although I didn’t usually try to write when he was around, I had to learn how to do it. We agreed I would have the mornings to write, that Matt would come and see me when he woke up but would then hang out with Erwyn until midday. I pledged to myself not to let the outside world in until after lunch.

Then, inspired by a friend who told me about the Pomodoro Technique where you work in bursts of twenty-five minutes, I decided to chunk up my two hours into four flips of my thirty-minute timer. This worked really well. Matt did interrupt me a bit, but I would give him a cuddle and point at the timer. I realized he liked policing me, so I encouraged him not to let me linger too long over breakfast and he enjoyed telling me to get back to the grindstone. In the afternoon I gave myself over to him, and we did schoolwork and read together. When Matt had his tech time, I answered my emails and had Zooms. Necessity was the mother of invention, and I learnt that there was something pleasingly monastic about living to a strict routine. As I got back into the novel, my enthusiasm built and I could forget about the timer, though I still had to be rigorous with the no-internet rule. As the months went on and various difficult and upsetting things happened, I was largely able to write it all down in my morning pages. ‘I’m doing this for me because I will feel better,’ I would say to myself, ‘and for my future self because she will be interested,’ and I would pour it all onto the page.

Should I work if I am ill?

Thinking back to kindling, if the sticks are too damp to catch fire then it may just be painful to keep trying. I do occasionally diagnose a day or two in bed for myself. I try to make sure I am genuinely under the weather rather than feeling fearful about my project. If I do sanction this time off, it is important not to lose it to social media and emails. I send myself to bed with no technology and try to sleep. Action cures fear, though, so often if I can get going, then writing will make me feel better.

What about when depressed?

This is hard and everyone’s experience is different. If you get depressed, the main thing is to look after yourself, but it is also really important to realize you are looking at your project through bleak eyes. You may need to stop writing for a while – though I find if I can get enough energy to do the emotional inventory it will help – but don’t make bigger decisions, or decide that it is all useless and pointless, when you are in a state of mind where everything looks useless and pointless anyway. This trick I have honed, of not making big decisions while depressed, has hugely changed my life for the better. When I feel my mood dip, I pivot into extreme self-care and ask as little as possible from myself until I feel better again. I may want to abandon life and people and jobs and books I am writing, but I have learnt to suppress these urges because when I come out the other side, I will no longer hate everything. I say to myself: ‘I promise that in your future you are glad to be alive,’ and then go to bed.

I’m upset about the state of the world

This is a tricky one, but will the world be served if you are so aghast by everything in it that you can’t do the work of finding your voice and making a contribution? I am rendered impotent and depressed if I consume too much news, and have come to see that this serves no one and that it is better to retrench for a while. This quote from Hilary Mantel helps me feel it is the right choice not to give in to gloom: ‘I think a novelist is disempowered if she is cynical or jaded, if she feels human possibilities are exhausted. You have to write out of a belief that things could be different and better.’

What if I’m tired?

HALT is an acronym used in recovery circles. When you have a craving you should stop and ask yourself if you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired. It is useful in general life too, and with writing. Do not judge your work from a negative place. I’m embarrassed to admit I only fairly recently twigged how important it is that I stop for lunch, because if I don’t, I get increasingly dispirited and upset with my project, and start chopping bits out or wanting to give up. I’m just hungry! My writing life is much more pleasant since I stopped trying to work from a place of low resources.

I keep getting stuck

It’s tempting to think you would start writing on day one and then get better and better and more confident, whereas because writing is the tug of war between desire and fear, it can feel more like zigzagging. Several times a day you may think, ‘That’s rather nice, I might be a bit of a genius,’ and you also think, ‘This is the worst watery slop that has ever existed.’ This isn’t something you can fix once and for all. I am hoping that now I understand the way even positive attention can be destabilizing, and the paralysing effects of being frightened, I will be able to navigate more smoothly through my writerly ups and downs, being grateful for fair winds and less bowled over when I hit a squall. When I’m really stuck I make a list: ‘I don’t want to write my book because . . .’ It may seem counter-intuitive, but it is better to download the fear on the page rather than bottle it up. So get it all out, calm down, do something nice for yourself, re-commit.

I’m so confused!

Well, that’s normal. I used to get so cross with myself for this, and then I realized that I will always feel more confused before I feel less confused and eventually arrive at clarity. It’s like spring cleaning. It gets worse before it gets better. There comes a time when all your stuff is all over the floor and you can’t see how you’ll ever achieve order, but you have to be resilient and hard-working and then you will.

I’m still frightened . . .

Can you reframe it as awe? Try: ‘I am here at the threshold. Of course I feel awed by the task ahead. It is a big deal to write. But today I am only playing. I don’t have to show anyone if I don’t want to. I just have to write and I will feel so much better afterwards. Here I go. The first word is the hardest.’

When I was trying to moderate my drinking, I realized I couldn’t have two drinks and stop but I could have no drinks. The most difficult thing was saying no to the first offer. Then it got progressively easier and by the end of the evening, on the tube, surrounded by drunk people, I was quite pleased to be sober. To get myself over the first no, I’d sing, ‘The first no is the hardest’ to the tune of ‘The First Cut is the Deepest’. Try it if you get stuck on the anxiety threshold. Sing, ‘The first word is the hardest’ to yourself as you get to work.

What if I’m bored?

I used to think boredom was a sign that my work wasn’t very good, but my mind was changed after reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. He interviews an Olympic coach who says the athletes who succeed are the ones who can tolerate the boredom of the early starts and repetitive training. And I now see that boredom is crucial and that I have to stick with it and not seek distraction. I don’t understand why but I often have a deep, almost unbearable feeling of boredom just before a major breakthrough. It helps if you can make your manuscript the most interesting thing in your life, so I will have periods where I deprive myself of all other forms of entertainment and then I have to start entertaining myself.

What about when it all feels too much?

Sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode and my brains will end up all over the walls. This is the moment when I used to think, ‘It’s all too hard. I’m never going to be able to do it.’ These days I am trying to take a breath, to welcome the expansion, to enjoy the fact that I am having new thoughts, that I am growing my awareness. It is really important that I sit in this moment, that I don’t seek instant and banal soothing from the internet or the biscuit tin. I feel rocky, like I’ve been knocked over by a big wave. I am breathless and worry I won’t be able to get back up. But I will. I just need to float. To keep moving my hand through the water, my fingers over the keyboard.

I read The Hunger Games to Matt. We are both entranced by the story of Katniss and how she must fight against other young people for the televisual entertainment of Panem. She is getting ready for the challenge by trying to learn as much as she can, and it occurs to me that writing a book is like voluntarily going into the arena. You can train and prepare and have some pre-existing skills, but you have no idea what you are going to find in there. Forest fires, tracker jacker wasps, mutant dogs . . . We live in a world where it is easy to see pain on our screens and do stuff that is bad for us. In the moment I want to feel full, stroked, entertained and soothed. The only way I create work is by removing access to short-term pleasure and learning to delay gratification in favour of satisfaction.

This is what your arena is full of. The hallucinations created by the tracker jacker wasps buzz about in your brain and tell you that it’s all too hard, too difficult, that you should just go and eat a load of doughnuts or look at Twitter or get drunk or get laid instead. Resist them. Come back to the self. Come back to the page.

The arena is also full of miracle cures and new discoveries and plants with healing properties, and you have reserves of courage and ability that you don’t even know you possess. So make writing your arena. Be bold. Step up. It is a journey of discovery like no other, and you can do it all from your mind.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

MAYA ANGELOU

Dearest Writer,

We have come a long way, and before I say goodbye I want to tell you one last important thing. This is a recent revelation for me and I hope it may ease your path. We should not make our writing or the success of it into a condition of our happiness. We are worthy before we write the book, as we write the book, if no one wants to publish the book, if someone does publish the book, and if lots of people then say it is either brilliant and life-changing or boring and crap. If we put our sense of our worthiness inside ourselves rather than at the other side of our achievements, then we will be all the better for it, and more able to navigate the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. So let’s do it anyway, irrespective of anything other than the act of writing itself. Make a final pact with me, dear writer. We won’t wait for someone else to tell us that writing is worth our time and attention, but we will glory in giving our desire for external validation the slip. We’ll revel in our curiosity, focus on the meaning and purpose of the work itself, and surrender ourselves to the effort and exhilaration of putting life on the page.

Epilogue

I’m in Kestle Barton with my writers. It is just before the first coronavirus lockdown. The news is increasingly alarming, and we are all twitchy but trying to stay focused on benefiting from this time and not losing it all in panic. I am recording the teaching sessions to help me write this book, because being with people in real life draws the best stuff out of me. I hope that by transcribing these recordings I can get some of that energy onto the page.

My friend Claire the therapist is here, working on a book about the benefits of nature. She offers to take us for a mini forest bathing session before we start the day’s class. We stand in a circle as she gently tells us about receptivity and how there is no wrong way to do it. I take a few breaths and feel calmer. I look at Claire, beautiful in her bobble hat, and think of how much I value her friendship. I glance at the others, also scarved and mittened. They are newer connections; some were strangers just a few days ago, but here we are, forging relationships, sharing our vulnerabilities.

Claire sends us on a mission to find a small area and examine it intently. I have been walking past this wall for days but have never noticed how much is going on with the different types of moss. I would not have known there could be so many varying shades of brown and green. There is a tiny bunch of primroses nestling between wall and grass. How did I not notice it? Because I was rushing, preoccupied. When we hurry, we miss what is under our nose.

We come back together, and then Claire suggests we find something that nature has already discarded. I choose an unadorned branch with no buds or foliage. I can use it to help me explain why you shouldn’t keep editing before you have more of a sense of your overall structure. ‘Look,’ I will say, ‘you’d find it harder to snap off this bit of twig if it was in full flower.’ Then I see that it has thorns and could hurt me if I don’t handle it carefully. I like that too. We need a measure of caution when engaging with our stories.

Claire talks about the seasons, about spring following winter, and I think that I too could learn to hibernate, to allow myself fallow periods to become fertile again. I decide I will get a rose in a pot and grow it on a trellis by my front door at home. I will watch its progress and consider the proximity of the flower and thorn, of beauty and danger, of joy and pain.

We finish. I feel I have travelled far in those fifteen minutes with Claire and the others, with nature as our setting.

Months later I am at home. The virus continues. It would be so easy to be derailed, but I have spent so much of my life allowing external events to stop me writing. I want to keep going. I remember the recordings I made. I press play and am transported to the converted apple store where we gathered each day. I am warmed by the good company. I hear myself set an exercise and flip the timer for five minutes. I enjoy the not quite silence that follows. I love this noise of communal writing. The scratching of a pen on paper, the tapping of a keyboard, the occasional sniff, sometimes a giggle, a deep sigh. I could fast-forward but I remind myself not to rush, and I listen and look out of the window of my little room, at the far-away triangle of blue that sits between the trees and the houses.

The five minutes are up. I am talking again. I have snagged the thorny branch on my cardigan and I hear laughter as people help untangle me. ‘It’s a metaphor for something,’ I say. And as I continue to transcribe myself, I am flooded with gratitude for those writers and all the others who have granted me the honour of standing alongside as they do the work of mining the self, and it occurs to me that I am finally learning to really like the sound of my own voice.

Further Reading

Probably the single best thing you can do for your writing, after making the time to do it, is to read. It will be no surprise to you by now, dear writer, that I would strongly urge you to spend fewer of your precious minutes on social media and news, and more on engaging with long-form narrative. Come, wander with me among my bookcases . . .

The writing shelf

I’ve been reading some of these for decades, and every time I go back I discover something that I didn’t notice until I was ready for it. What all these books have in common is that they feel well-intentioned, like their author is getting a genuine kick out of sharing their process and really wants us to succeed. They are all heavy on inspiration and light on rules.

• Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande

Published in 1934, this slim and practical volume advocates writing first thing to access the richness of the unconscious: ‘Throughout your writing life, whenever you are in danger of the spiritual drought that comes to the most facile of writers from time to time, put the pencil and paper back on your bedside table, and wake to write in the morning.’

• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

This course for creativity recovery that you can do over twelve weeks is full of inspiration and wisdom, and I love the way Cameron weaves in exercises and anecdotes. I know some newly sober women who have formed a group to do it together, which makes my heart feel glad. Elizabeth Gilbert says she has done it three times and credits it for Eat Pray Love.

• Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

A refreshing and liberating manifesto which urges us to let ourselves off various hooks: ‘Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.’

• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Published in 1986, this generous book has boatloads of practical tips and encouraging wisdom on every page: ‘Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.’

• On Writing by Stephen King

Short and robust, this has some nice memoir writing in it and is full of gems: ‘Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.’

• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

‘Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.’ I have read this charming book so often I really feel like Anne Lamott is my friend. Her company is both invigorating and soothing, and she is great on short assignments and ‘shitty first drafts’ as a way to get work done.

• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

I spent a recent weekend luxuriating in this book, which is about Russian short stories but contains much for the memoirist to feast upon. Saunders is a beautiful writer and thinker, and his notion of ‘iconic space’ is very relevant to voice.

The rescue shelf

The following books have all helped me with the behavioural side of writing and life, and I read them in the evenings when I am staying off the internet. I have learnt that when my mood dips, it really serves me to browse my rescue shelf and remind myself of what I already know but can easily forget in the scrum of modern life.

• The Orchid and the Dandelion by W. Thomas Boyce

Oh, the joy of realizing that I am not just a broken dandelion! Boyce believes some people will thrive anywhere while others are more reactive to their environment, and he describes life as an orchid as ‘far more intense, painful, vivid and variable’. I read it with huge recognition and think it would make sense to a lot of writers and bookworms.

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

I’ve always struggled with traditional motivation and goal setting, and this entertaining book explains why and offers lots of practical advice on setting up good systems: ‘When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.’

• It’s Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel

If doing the emotional inventory works for you, then you’ll find lots to explore here: ‘Our emotions are a compass for life. Anyone can live a life in touch with his or her core emotions and diminish anxiety, shame, guilt, depression, addictions, obsessions, and other symptoms. How? By getting to know the core emotions underneath and learning how to work with them.’

• Digital Minimalism and Deep Work by Cal Newport

Really useful for understanding why we are so susceptible to social media; how intermittent feedback functions like a slot machine, and the way our drive for social approval has been hijacked to create ‘profitable behavioural addictions’. Lots of strategies, too, such as digital decluttering and shutdown rituals.

• Mindfulness for Creativity by Danny Penman

This is the book that explains the mouse in a maze experiment. It is so good on showing how our brain tricks us into overestimating threats and underestimating rewards and opportunities: ‘After all, you cannot be truly creative if you are frightened, dither endlessly and never take a risk.’

• Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin

A cracking book on habits that divides people into four different types – I’m an obliger – and shows us what strategies will offer us the best chance of success. It applies to everything and helped me to stop drinking, start running, and with how to get things done.

• Grief Works by Julia Samuel

The introduction to these affecting case studies about all kinds of loss is the single best thing I have ever read about grief. Samuel describes it as ‘a tug-of-war between the pain of loss and our instinct to survive’, and this has really helped me be less bowled over by its non-linear nature.

• The Child in You by Stefanie Stahl

Stahl’s theory is that most of our problems are caused by self-protection strategies we learnt in the past. This book certainly helped me see how the fear of making mistakes or displeasing people was damaging my life and my writing, and offered me strategies to lighten up a bit.

The memoir shelf

My first read happens quickly and for pleasure, and then I go back. How did the author make me feel that way? How did they manage their cast of characters/a long time frame/the fact that they didn’t know the whole story/the distressing material? How did they hold my attention and make me care? The books below are all fine examples of the genre, and I’ve given you the first line so you can get a sense of the voice and note how they are framing the story. (If you want a final exercise, then use these examples to interrogate what your own starting point might be . . . ) A word of warning, though. Don’t be dispirited by how good they are! Remember that while they may read as though they flowed straight from the author’s pen, they will all have involved huge effort. Comparing your work in progress to a published book is like watching the Oscars in your pyjamas and beating yourself up for not being red-carpet ready.

• Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

‘Romantic love is the most important and exciting thing in the entire world.’

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

‘I hadn’t so much forgot as I couldn’t bring myself to remember.’

• Maggie & Me by Damian Barr

‘It’s the 12th of October 1984.’

• Lowborn by Kerry Hudson

‘Shall we start with a happy ending?’

• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

‘I flipped through the CT scan images, the diagnosis obvious: the lungs were matted with innumerable tumours, the spine deformed, a full lobe of the liver obliterated.’

• This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay

‘In 2010, after six years of training and a further six years on the wards, I resigned from my job as a junior doctor.’

• Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel

‘It is a Saturday, late July, 2000; we are in Reepham, Norfolk, at Owl Cottage.’

• Bluets by Maggie Nelson

‘1. Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a colour.’

• I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell

‘On the path ahead, stepping out from behind a boulder, a man appears.’

• The Boy with the Topknot by Sathnam Sanghera

‘Drinking alone needn’t necessarily be a lowering experience.’

• Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla

‘I never considered becoming a parent myself until my mum died.’

• My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay

‘At fourteen I tattooed the initials of what I thought was my name into my hand.’

• Educated by Tara Westover

‘I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn.’

• The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

‘There’s a sound to breaking waves when they’re close, a sound like nothing else.’

• Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

‘When my mother was angry with me, which was often, she said, “The Devil led us to the wrong crib.” ’

An Inspiring Addendum

Towards the end of writing this book, I had the bright idea that I could ask writers I admire to offer their top piece of advice. This propelled me through the final stages of editing, and I am so pleased with the wisdom and encouragement that I pass on to you now.

Don’t worry about doing anything chronologically. Start with the thing you’re most excited about writing – a sentence or a scene or a character introduction – then work out from there. I call it collage writing, and sometimes it’s your only method to get you right into the middle of something.

If you’re stuck for a narrative shape, try a circle. Begin and end in the same place, or with the same two people, or examine the same reference. When this is done well – in a book or script or even an article – it can feel so satisfying for a reader.

Don’t follow literary trends. If you naturally write neat, sparse prose, then write in this way. If you like cramming sentences with description, then do that.

Read everything back aloud.

Don’t ask too many people for feedback.

—Dolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love

Whatever you do, do not think about your mum reading it. The only story you can tell is your own so don’t put words or intentions into others’ mouths. By the same token, this is your truth so don’t let what others might say or think prevent you telling it.

—Sam Baker, author of The Shift

Take ‘not writing’ just as seriously as writing, if not more so. Any time you feel blocked or can’t write contains a huge lesson about your relationship with writing – and with yourself, others and the wider world. Try not to beat yourself up about it but instead radically allow it and learn what it has to teach you this time.

—Meg-John Barker, author of Rewriting the Rules

Write the first draft as though nobody will ever read what you’ve written, forget about structure and form – that can come later – and just see what happens when you start putting things into words.

—Xanthi Barker, author of Will This House Last Forever?

The ‘writing down’ has got to be the thing that helps you because none of us are guaranteed readers. And although they are, mostly, very lovely people, and their engagement and approval is generous and joyful, you cannot write for other people. You’ve got to write for you. When I started writing, I imagined (foolishly) I would simply be retelling stories I already knew – after all, this had all happened to me, hadn’t it? A few months in, and precious few words later, I began realizing I was going to have to do much more than try to remember – I would have to relive, then recount, then reconstruct my experiences as a story using the tools of fiction. Taking control of the past does take you away from the present. Here’s a benefit I did not anticipate: once you’ve got all the really tough stuff down, lovely forgotten joys bob to the surface: wonderful lovely things that had been lost in depths and shadows.

—Damian Barr, author of Maggie & Me

If you’re writing about yourself, then do your very best to get yourself out of the way. This is not an oxymoron. What it means is that you are primarily there to be emblematic of your own experience, that is, an ambassador of that experience. Your goal is to elicit an empathetic or identifying response in the reader. What you feel about what you’ve gone through is often beside the point. So take us there, directly to the experience. But don’t emote.

—Marina Benjamin, author of Insomnia

The act of writing, telling your own story, claiming it for yourself and learning about all of the joy and pain you have lived through, can be profoundly healing. Publishing the story will not be the part of the experience that is healing. It’s OK to write as though you’re screaming, to pour all of your own darkness onto a page if you need to, but you also need to treat yourself with the greatest kindness, respect and empathy as you’re working out who to share that story with. Think about what you need from the experience, and take your time. Write for your living, human self; edit for your reading self. I hope writing brings you peace, but publishing will not bring validation, redemption or adulation. All of the people who love you are already here.

—Daisy Buchanan, author of The Sisterhood

A writing professor told me that fiction seeks the truth, but that in non-fiction, we have to begin with the truth. It’s difficult but necessary to find that starting place. And so, this means when you’re beginning to write, the first draft can be something wild and unharnessed, but then in the edit and the multiple redrafts, you have to be ruthless in finding that starting place, to get to the heart of the story. The truth isn’t always chronological, and it isn’t always at the beginning. But if you begin there, you will unlock something powerful.

—Catherine Cho, author of Inferno

What you think of as the most personal can often turn out to have the most universal resonance. If you’re fearful of writing something – ask yourself why. It could be that you’re fearful of being open about an experience that has caused you shame. Shame is a self-loathing emotion, and it can only survive in silence. The best antidote to shame is to share your vulnerability. That’s where you make the greatest connection with the reader. Attack the idea that there is nobility in invisibility. No one else is going to tell your story as well as you’ll tell it yourself because no one else has lived your truth. Don’t let that truth be hijacked by a shame that is not yours to carry.

—Elizabeth Day, author of How To Fail

There’s a saying in Jamaica that there are no facts, only versions. I don’t quite go along with the first bit – I think there are some facts – but the second part is certainly true when it comes to memoir. I have five surviving siblings and when they question what I write about our childhood then I tell them it’s my version. They can always recount their own version.

But whatever version you write, pay attention, let the credits trump the deficits. Surely it’s better to inspire, inform and entertain. Don’t be a carry down artist.

—Colin Grant, author of Bageye at the Wheel

This motto: ‘K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid.’ This comes from my father, who is not a writer but is a fan of self-help books. As a child, whenever I got stuck on a piece of school homework, he would encourage me to write ‘K.I.S.S.’ in light pencil on the paper and start again from the beginning, slowly. It’s a reminder to take things moment by moment, stick to the basics. Ask yourself: ‘If I had to make this much easier, what would that look like?’ ‘What’s the simplest version of this?’ ‘How can I break this down into easy steps?’ It works for pretty much any situation where you’ve got stuck. And there’s no arguing with it: you might as well figure out a simple version. You can always make it more complicated afterwards. (Except you won’t do this. Simple is always best.) It became the first thing I would write at the top of an exam paper. And I would ritually rub it out at the end of the exam when I’d finished. I found out years later that it comes from the US Navy where it is used as a principle for design and software development. Sometimes it’s rendered as ‘keep it simple, sailor’ or ‘keep it simple, soldier’. My dad’s version is more brutal. But it works. For homework, for exams, for writing, for everything.

—Viv Groskop, author of I Laughed, I Cried

Don’t try to write something that has already been written. It is your story so feel free to tell it your way. There is no ‘one’ way to write a memoir. Everything from chapter lengths to the tangents you choose to take is up to you. The way you tell it needs to feel as true to you as the story itself.

—Matt Haig, author of Reasons to Stay Alive

Don’t get it right, get it writ. Worry about how good it is or isn’t later on.

—Sali Hughes, author of Pretty Honest

GET TO THE END. Key to this is banning yourself from going back and revisiting anything you’ve already written, otherwise all that happens is you get a perfectly polished first third of your book and nothing else. There’s plenty of time to make it good/better/best once you’ve finished your first draft.

—Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt

There is so often a chasm between the emotions that others expect of us, and how we really feel. To live in the world is to dissemble, and understandably so. But in writing, the space between expectation and reality is everything. Don’t be afraid to linger there. Or, do be afraid. But stay anyway.

—Marianne Levy, author of Don’t Forget to Scream

Writing is art, craft and graft and mostly graft. Which is good, because we can all do that. Protect your time – and this includes the time when your pen is not actually touching paper (or finger/keyboard) but you are preparing to write, maintaining the mood during a tea break etc while writing, and then in the immediate aftermath of writing, when stray ideas or final touches might occur to you. None of that is the time to be paying the council tax, responding to queries about lost socks/travelcards or chasing the plumber.

—Lucy Mangan, author of Bookworm

My advice is to think a lot about the difference between what happened in what you’re writing about – what is sometimes called the situation – and what you’re doing with it or making from it – what is sometimes called the story, in Vivian Gornick’s terms. Many different possible stories can be made out of a situation, but what is the one here the narrator is most interested in, what have they come to the page to say? Or more accurately, what have they come to the page to discover, and to invite the reader along for that process of discovery.

—Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

Decide how much you want to put on the page before you start and stick to it – some things will be too personal, or will be stories that belong more to other people than to you. It is your book, your reflections and memories, and you can include as much or as little as you want. Be true to yourself as a writer, but also be thoughtful to others.

—Kate Mosse, author of An Extra Pair of Hands

Enjoy yourself; learn to love the labour of writing, because it will show. I cannot overstate this. Your reader will feel the joy coming off the page, will sense it in the white spaces around your words.

—Maggie O’Farrell, author of I Am, I Am, I Am

From my experience, the most powerful writing seems to come when I am as vulnerable as possible on the page, because that seems to be rewarded with vulnerability in the reader: confession inspires confession. And so my suggestion would be: try to find the places or the times of day where you can write without second-guessing yourself too much. For me, it’s between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m.: that’s before the city gets busy, before I am aware of the sensation that others may be watching, so that it is just me and my thoughts. But, wherever and however you write, I would always suggest trying to write about the things that make you most afraid, the ones which you are most hiding from. I don’t always succeed in doing that myself, but when I do it mostly makes for my best work.

—Musa Okwonga, author of One of Them

Write like you talk to a friend, or send an email. When I wrote my first book I got stage fright at the idea of writing A BOOK. I spent two weeks trying to describe the sky because I thought that’s what book writers should do. Eventually I cut all that out, and I am happiest with my writing when I write the way I’d talk to my friends. I bring out my funniest stories when I imagine I’m talking to them and I put things more succinctly. So my advice (for whatever it’s worth) is don’t try to be clever. Just be you.

—Marianne Power, author of Help Me

There’s increasing pressure to write to the moral and stylistic mores of the day. To write what people already think, what others think they will buy. This is a deadening feeling, moreover will bore your readers, who wish you to be brave in ways they fear they cannot. Writing memoir is lashing oneself to a mast in a storm – there is no genre more exposing, galvanizing, or less suitable for anyone who wishes to feel safe, and part of the pack. But if you risk nothing, you reveal nothing. Fight for what you really want to say.

—Rhik Samadder, author of I Never Said I Loved You

As human beings we have one significant design fault. When we are going through a difficult time, for whatever reason, it could be life events or with ourself, we tend to turn on ourself harshly, with criticism. My advice is to turn to yourself with self-compassion. You might need fierce compassion as well as tender compassion to keep going, but take out the ‘shitty committee’ and bring in the love, and what is hard will become more bearable.

—Julia Samuel, author of Grief Works

How do you keep going, even in the face of dire horror? I always come back to the idea that everything has a crack in it, through which light is able to get in. The solace is inspired by a poem, entitled ‘Anthem’; I once had a brief but rather public conversation with its author, Leonard Cohen, as he prepared to sing the poem, and the recollection of that moment, and the line, work their magic, in every time, place and situation.

—Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

People write family memoirs for all sorts of reasons: for therapy, for revenge, to make sense of love or grief or failure, but also to deal with difficult issues, draw a line in the sand and move on. For me it became important to discover my family story, to reconstruct the history, but as soon as I had finished I realized families sometimes have secrets for a reason: you can go slightly mad if you know everything. It is also important to forget, and in the years that have followed publication, I have been so good at it that I often meet strangers who seem to know more about my upbringing and family life than I do, and I am startled at their intimate knowledge.

—Sathnam Sanghera, author of The Boy with the Topknot

The photograph of the past changes with time and yet it remains the same. In other words a tree is a tree until you know why it was planted or when it was planted or by whom. Once you know then it is no longer a tree. It is symbolic. It is a series of stories. It has a truth. A memoir is about trust. The writer trusts herself. This is the greatest struggle and also the greatest release, once it’s done. Firstly I thought my memoir was about setting the record straight. I was wrong. However traumatic a memoir may be, I think it’s about love. You will discover the real reason to write a memoir after you have written it. Everyone seems to think a memoir is about your entire life. A memoir could be about one day in your life.

—Lemn Sissay, author of My Name Is Why

Your story matters: the first draft is the book you (the reader) need you (the writer) to have written. Get that draft to where you (the reader) need it to be. Everything after that – the editing, the redrafting, the trying to get it published – will come when it’s time. In that first draft, all that matters is you, as a reader and as a writer. Trust your instincts as a reader as well as a writer.

—Nikesh Shukla, author of Brown Baby

Try your own voice. It’s not just that you’ll sound authentic but it will be easier than trying to sound like someone else. When it comes to writing about real people, in my experience you can say awful things about them as long as you are sure to note their good looks, general intelligence and kindness to animals.

—Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina

Your story belongs to you. Do not use the page as a place to settle scores, but also know that you have every right to tell your story. I believe good writing is born in truth telling – or at least, the attempt to reach a version of the truth. Every story, after all, is open to interpretation, since we are all experiencing our own version of what the ‘truth’ is. Writing with honesty and integrity should help you to silence the inner critic which questions whether you are the ‘right’ or ‘best’ person to tell a story. This quest will also help arm you against shame or self-doubt, which you have to put aside to keep writing. Do not underestimate the amount of time you need to spend thinking about your work. And no time is wasted that is spent reading poetry. If you get stuck, can’t write, feel depressed or question what you are doing, read some poetry.

—Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other

Some chapters, some scenes will floor you and unexpectedly so. Write it all down while it’s still raw and messy and uncomfortable. All that energy will be there on the page and it might turn out to be some of your best writing. And don’t worry. Your equilibrium will return, your distance will return, and you will come back to yourself. Allow yourself to walk away once you’ve written it and congratulate yourself for your bravery and insight. And if you have to delete it later, then be brave enough to do that too.

—Kit de Waal, author of My Name Is Leon and Without Warning and Only Sometimes

Anger does more harm to those that hold it than to those against whom it is held. It can never be abolished totally but it can be turned into a creative force. If your parents or guardians are still alive, treat them kindly whilst you have time. When you get to their age, you may realize just what they gave to enable you to have a start in life.

—Terry Waite, author of Taken on Trust

Writing memoir can be cathartic or traumatic, and often it’s both. Like all writing, it’s about 90 per cent thinking, 10 per cent actual writing. Walking helps.

—Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness

Read your writing aloud. But not as you. Read it in a different accent you admire. Or read it while doing an impression of someone whose voice you like. This sounds silly. And you’ll feel silly. But you’ll notice new things in the writing that you won’t when using your actual voice. It’s sometimes easier to read about yourself when you’re pretending to be someone else.

—David Whitehouse, author of About a Son

To be afraid of pouring yourself onto the page is a given. But try not to push that fear away, or tell yourself that it’s not okay to be scared. Welcome it. To be afraid is to feel, and to feel is to be alive.

—Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie

If you’re going to write about something really personal, be sure you’re happy for it to be read by thousands of strangers and your next-door neighbour. Before you even start writing, make sure you have a bumper box of teabags in the cupboard. Don’t stress about word targets. If today you write ten words or a thousand it doesn’t matter, just make those words convey exactly what you want them to express.

—Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path

For me, the most important time in the writing process is . . . not writing. What I used to call ‘shelf time’ – put it aside, let it gather some dust, revisit it as you would a friend you haven’t seen for a while – remember what it is you love about them and smile at their foibles that madden you. Luckily, in this friendship, you can fix the foibles . . .

—Greg Wise, author of Not That Kind of Love

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

TONI MORRISON

Resources

Mining the self can be hard work and might be destabilising. Make sure you always put yourself and your wellbeing first. If you are struggling, ask for help. Here are some resources that you can contact for support.

Mind: A mental health charity

Infoline: 0300 123 3393

Email: info@mind.org.uk

Samaritans: A charity aiming at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress

Tel: 116 123

Email: jo@samaritans.org

Shout: A free, confidential, 24/7 text messaging support service for anyone who is struggling to cope

Text: 85258

Acknowledgements

In 2018 I was stuck with my novel and wondered if I might be happier if I trained as a therapist. I knew that a publisher I had long admired, Carole Tonkinson, had done this so I asked for advice. Over coffee, Carole encouraged me to talk and then eventually and very kindly said she thought I could make the helpful contribution I yearned for by just carrying on teaching writing. And that I would manage to get unstuck with my novel. And that at some point in the future I might want to write about writing. And all those things came to pass and I am extremely grateful to Carole for everything from having the idea, to enabling such a pleasurable process, to making this book into the beautiful object it is. I’m also indebted to Hockley Raven Spare, Zainab Dawood, Katie Dent, Claire Gatzen, Kate Berens and everyone at Bluebird, including Mel Four for the gorgeous cover and illustrations, Jodie Mullish, Sian Gardiner, Jess Duffy, Emma Finnigan, Christian Lewis, Sarah Badhan and Lindsay Nash. There are too many to name individually in the wider team at Pan Macmillan, but thanks to everyone working in communications, contracts, distribution, operations, production, sales and beyond who helped to transform this book from an idea into something that might inspire a reader to become a writer themselves.

Much of what I know about writing and editing was learnt at the knee of Francesca Main who edited my first four books and from my agent Jo Unwin who has been with me from the beginning. All my thanks and love go to them, and, as they say, any mistakes are mine alone.

Writing can be a lonely old business, and part of what I enjoy about teaching is the feeling of having colleagues. I’m grateful to Helen Mellor and all at Arvon, Anna Davis and all at Curtis Brown Creative, and Spread the Word, New Writing Norwich, New Writing North, Falmouth University and everyone else who has given me stimulating employment. Huge thanks also to my co-tutors and collaborators; Colin Grant, Marina Benjamin, Kit de Waal, Nina Stibbe, Kate Dimbleby, Wyl Menmuir, Julia Samuel, Claire de Boursac, and Janine Giovanni. An especial wave to everyone who has contributed to the inspiring addendum: Dolly Alderton, Sam Baker, Meg-John Barker, Xanthi Barker, Damian Barr, Marina Benjamin, Daisy Buchanan, Catherine Cho, Elizabeth Day, Colin Grant, Viv Groskop, Matt Haig, Sali Hughes, Adam Kay, Marianne Levy, Lucy Mangan, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Kate Mosse, Maggie O’Farrell, Musa Okwonga, Marianne Power, Rhik Samadder, Julia Samuel, Philippe Sands, Sathnam Sanghera, Lemn Sissay, Nikesh Shukla, Nina Stibbe, Clover Stroud, Kit de Waal, Terry Waite, Christie Watson, David Whitehouse, Candice Carty-Williams, Raynor Winn and Greg Wise.

As soon as I started teaching, my students told me I should write it all down and I am so grateful for all that encouragement. Truly, the very thought of you all lights me up. A special mention to Esther Connor for being my first client and to everyone present when I recorded sessions at Kelso and Kestle Barton. It has been a joy to hear your voices again.

Big love and thanks also to Sanja Oakley, Roberta Boyce, Mia Kowada, Kristin Ecklund, Jo Dawson, Sophie Kirkham, John and Lizzie Waterhouse, Sarah Wade, Crystal Mahey-Morgan, Inbal Brickner-Braun, Ros Try-Hane, Kat Brown, Jenny Knight and Julie Noble.

On the home front, my parents, Kevin and Miggy Mintern, continue to support and look after me in multitudinous ways, as does my Aunt, Marion Bowyer. I’m grateful to Grace Alexander for vastly improving everything, and to Will Lewis and Sophie Seamark for helping me get some work done. And a final word to Erwyn and Matt for sharing the joys and pains of everyday life with me, and for allowing me to put them in books. Matt thinks I should dedicate this book to our pets. I have refused, but have agreed to mention them here. Reepicheep, Arabella and Stitch: Thanks for all the emotional support. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Praise for Write It All Down

‘Cathy has an extraordinary gift for helping people tell their stories and you need this gently inspirational book in your life.’

Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina and Reasons to Be Cheerful

‘Cathy is the person who first told me to write about my mental health when I was nervous to do so. She is a great writer herself and this [is] brilliant.’

Matt Haig, author of Reasons to Stay Alive
and The Midnight Library

‘A wonderful, inspiring and practical book . . . This is a gift of a book to aspiring writers, and any writer. Cathy has mined her own experience, heart and wisdom to guide us gently into putting words on a page, and those pages building to a book. I recommend this book to anyone who wants inspiration, concrete tips and encouragement to write.’

Julia Samuel, author of Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass

‘I’ve been so inspired by Cathy’s generous wisdom, and I can hear her voice in these pages . . . full of wonderful advice, but above all it feels like having an encouraging friend by your side.’

Catherine Cho, author of Inferno

‘I can remember Cathy encouraging me too, when I wasn’t sure I could pull off a memoir. She’s clearly the right person to be writing this book.’

Sophie Heawood, author of The Hungover Games

‘Please read this book . . . Warm, wise, helpful and practical, Cathy Rentzenbrink outlines all the reasons we come up with not to write and then lovingly tells us to get on with it . . . I loved it. Kindness and encouragement brim from every page.’

Marianne Power, author of Help Me!

‘Cathy Rentzenbrink’s Write It All Down is typically generous thoughtful and kind. If you’re thinking of writing memoir this is the book for you.’

Marina Benjamin, author of Last Days in Babylon,
The Middlepause and Insomnia

‘I loved the whole thing . . . It was good to see a lot of the places I’ve got to with my own writing practice reflected in Cathy’s suggestions.’

Meg-John Barker, author of Rewriting the Rules
and Life Isn’t Binary

About the Author

Cathy Rentzenbrink is the author of The Last Act of Love, A Manual for Heartache, Dear Reader and Everyone Is Still Alive. She lives in Cornwall with her family.

First published 2022 by Bluebird

This electronic edition published 2022 by Bluebird

an imprint of Pan Macmillan

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www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-5290-5623-5

Copyright © Cathy Rentzenbrink 2022

NON-FICTION

Design & illustration: Mel Four/Bluebird Art Department

Author photograph: Peter Flude

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