‘Take care not to send the manuscript off to agents or publishers too early. Writers are so often guilty of this (me included!). We’ve worked so damn hard on our book, we’ve done so many drafts, surely it must be finished?! But it’s worth taking another break, giving yourself a cooling-off period, and then reassessing.’

‘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.’

‘By exposing all members to memoir, poetry, screenplay, historical fiction, even musicals etc, our constructive criticism allows all members to develop skills outside their comfort zones owing to the diversity of genres canvassed.’