This month, the Writing NSW team has been reading memoir, devouring essays on women’s football in the midst of the Matildas fever, and listening to podcasts that tell stories and discuss writing for video games.
‘I have so many lovely moments when readers have recognised themselves in my personal essays and felt like I was writing about their own lives. It is in these moments that I see the true power of memoir; we are writing our own personal truths and yet these are universal truths.’
Have a look at what the Writing NSW team has been reading recently: stories of Country, queerness, grief, coming of age, and speculative fiction.
“The better you understand the intricacies of good writing, the more powerfully you can write about any aspect of your life.”
“… a distinction must be made between the artform of fiction or writing for oneself or journaling. Both are important, but they serve different purposes.”
“Drafting is just one stage of a writing project: there’s a time to create characters, a time to edit, a time to work on plot problems… You can have a productive day without writing a word.”
“All memoirs have to move from some kind of diary-version, which is really for your own self, to being a public version which acknowledges the universal.” Kate Holden spoke to us on writing memoir.
We chatted to author and writer Meera Atkinson, ahead of her online course Writing Trauma, about the process of writing, memory and the ethical obligations around writing in this complex genre.
