This afternoon as the insistent blustery wind buffeted the magenta bougainvillea on our balcony overlooking Balmoral Beach in Sydney, I listened to an interview with Oxford University’s Jeremy Hughes and Virginia Woolf’s biographer, Hermione Lee. Jeremy asked Hermione whether writers can employ similar techniques to photographers to produce different images of the same subject. Hermione’s […]
I often mentor people who are writing their memoir and one of the questions they frequently ask me is: ‘How can I make my memoir more interesting for my readers?’ One way you can make your writing more compelling is to create vivid scenes full of sensory details. These scenes fuel a reader’s imagination and […]
Voice is integral to an individual’s identity, whether we write about someone else or ourselves. A person’s voice reveals a great deal and we make all sorts of assumptions about them because of this. In her chapter on voice in the book The Art of Memoir Mary Karr says, ‘a voice conjures the human who […]
I’m currently reading ‘ Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing’, by Robert A. Caro, the multi-Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of Robert Moses, who changed the urban landscape of New York with his massive bridges and freeways, and Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Jack Kennedy as US President after JFK was assassinated. In his book, Caro says that a […]
As Fathers’ Day approaches are you struggling to find the perfect gift for your dad or grandfather? Do they have enough socks and undies to last a lifetime and is their bathroom cabinet overflowing with aftershave you gave them as presents for the last few years? Have you thought of giving your father or grandfather […]
Virginia Woolf once said, ’How does one write biography?’ The famous writer struggled with how to write the biographies of other people as well as her own autobiography. She drafted her autobiography several times, but each version was different from its predecessor and sadly she ended her life before finishing what could have been her […]
One of the most challenging aspects of life story writing is bringing characters to life. Taking a real-life person, getting inside them and truly knowing them. One of a life writer’s responsibilities is to reveal the gap between the mask a person wears and their secret self. But how can a life writer cut through […]
Writing a memoir helps you find your voice, tell your story, and reach out to others. You start thinking about your memories, moments that make you feel young again, wondering: what is the legacy I’m leaving behind? But how to get started? I speak to many people who want to write their memoir, but they […]
