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Literary Consultancy and Coaching for Writers from Jacqui Lofthouse

Networking for writers and why it matters

by Filed Under: Authors, Community, Events, Inspiration, Memoir, Motivation, Networking, The writing life, Writers 4 Comments

There’s no doubt about it, networking for writers matters. Luckily, for most of us, meeting other writers is also a hugely enjoyable pastime. But even if you’re an introvert who would prefer to spend his/her life in a library or at the writing desk, I’d suggest that you do carefully consider the benefits of meeting your peers and forming a writers’ community – the rewards are, without doubt, massive. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (described in a review by the Sunday Times as one of the twelve most influential books since World War II – Taleb predicted the 2008 financial crisis) wrote: “Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.”

Networking for writers

Writers networking event at the Charroux Literary Festival 2015

Parties are unpredictable events – for Taleb, the very act of putting oneself in a random situation is a positive act in that you are allowing for unpredictable things to unfold. Literary Festivals are grand parties of a kind and this year at the Charroux Literary Festival I hope I opened up all kinds of good serendipity by running a Networking for Writers event.

What was intriguing for me about the conversation that ensued was how many common threads unravelled during the course of our session – and how much easier it becomes to solve a writing problem or find a new approach to a challenge when one brings several interesting writerly minds together. When writers have networks and communities where they can share their common experiences and ask questions, there is huge room for cross-fertilisation of ideas and plenty of powerful inspiration.

Let’s take a look, for example, at some of the rich connections in this group. The writers attending included:

Sue Crampton, founder of the Limousin Writer’s Group

Stephanie Zia, founder of Blackbird Digital Books

Harriet Springbett whose novel Tree Magic has been accepted for publication.

Alison Donaldson, author of Communities of Influence whose subject is writing and conversation and especially how we combine them at work.

Diana Morgan-Hill, author of Love & Justice, a memoir which has received wide coverage, including being recently featured here on the This Morning programme

and Kathy Jones, one of the Directors at Lightning Books

Just look at the diversity of literary experience in that one room in Charroux! It’s not surprising that wonderful things happen when such interesting individuals come together. As I write this, I’m preparing to go to a literary launch party, and it makes me all the more excited about the synchronicities that might unfold.

What were the common threads at this Networking for Writers event?

It’s fascinating, I always find, when writers come together, how we find areas that many of us struggle with and how together we find solutions that we would never have been able to find alone. Here are just a few areas that sprang up in our conversation. I wonder how many of them are familiar questions for you?

  1. How do I organise my writing work?
  2. How do I develop the persistence I need in order to finish a whole novel?
  3. Where is the overlap between fiction and memoir?
  4. How do I write a good synopsis that is attractive in the marketplace?
  5. In memoir-writing, how do I deal with the legalities of working with true facts and writing about real people?
  6. What do I do when I feel that I lack inspiration on a particular day?
  7. I struggle with focus – how to I develop the ‘focus’ muscle?

Together we talked through individual questions and shared our experiences and in an intense hour or so, we found ways through our blocks and uncertainties and found a greater clarity via our discussion.

So often, we try to make sense of our writing issues alone, but how much better is it when we’re not working alone? Over the years I know that I have learned so much from my writer friends and gained enormously from their wisdom. The writing groups that I have belonged to have enriched my writing hugely and I do encourage you, in the months ahead, to think carefully about how you might meet other writers and share with them, whether online or in person.

loft-cabaretThere’s also a lovely opportunity to meet me and join one of my groups for a full day in London in January. At the time of writing, there are still five places remaining on my Developing Your Novel course on 22nd January 2016, an exclusive one day fiction writing course for those who wish to improve their writing skills and take their manuscript to the next level, taking place in the beautiful Wallacespace in Covent Garden. The participants who have already signed up have a wonderful range of experience and I know it’s going to be a fascinating day where we develop yet another new community of writers.

Whether or not you can join my next event, do take some time today to ask yourself the following three questions:

  1. How can I develop my community as a writer?
  2. How can I nurture the writing colleagues and connections I already have?
  3. What can I do today to create serendipity in my writing life? (Where’s the party? Who can I submit to? Who can I connect with today?)

I wish you much luck with your writerly connections and do let me know how you get on…

 

 

Memoir writing and memory: fact versus truth

by Filed Under: Authors, Inspiration, Literary Consultancy, Memoir, Motivation, Writers Leave a Comment

Guest Post on memoir writing from new Writing Coach consultant Jon Magidsohn

writing memoir, memoir writing
I once heard an interview with musician Melissa Etheridge, who discovered, while listening to the lyrics of a song she’d written and recorded several years earlier, ‘Oh … that’s what I meant by that line.’ I understood immediately, because I’d experienced such moments while writing, when the words just come without forethought or editing. You know they’re the right words but you don’t always know why until, perhaps much later, the truth is revealed to you when you have gained some distance and perspective from that instinctive point of creation.

Ideally, as a writer, you’ll discover your truth before you publish. But this adventure of discovery is what I enjoy most about writing memoir. The search for the truth – your truth – is what memoir writing is all about.

To quote the best definition of memoir I’ve found: memoir is the story of your memory. It’s not meant to be a photograph or a legal document or even a reliable representation of your memory. Just the story. Because memory, despite our intimate relationship with it, is really only our best guess at the past.

By its very nature, crafting memoir is a creative writing exercise. Our memory – the memoirist’s prime resource – is imperfect and unreliable. It is open to interpretation and influence; it is prone to misdirection and distraction. And that’s the whole point. Making sense of these inconsistencies are what sets good memoir aside from stolid, facts-based writing.

Because truth is not fact.

So how do you get to the truth? Can a writer trust in a source that is so temperamental? The memoirist must preside like a judge over fragments of evidence and bias, dismissing the trivial and fine-tuning the significant details. The memoirist is required to be story-teller, poet, analyst and observer, absorbing the story and cosying up with the good bits.

writing memoir, memoir writing, jon magidsohn

Jon Magidsohn

Eventually, hopefully, you will not only have told your story, you’ll have shown what your story means to you. Therein lies one of the keys to writing memoir. You as the crafter of the memoir are given the privilege of creating a lasting testament to your memory because, regardless of whether it is widely read or not, you’ll have explored, discovered and shared why you wrote the story in the first place.

This can be contentious if others are involved. Your story may not always match another’s, even if you were both there. There may be more than one truth. But those who wish to contradict an author’s memory may do so by writing their own memoir.

Critics of memoirs suggest that part of the problem with the genre is the contemplative, too-personal navel-gazing that tends to make the narrator sound piteous and therefore untrustworthy. This attitude is both inexplicable and altogether missing the point. There is a difference between indulgence and introspection.

If you write on the right side of that fine line you’ll have found the poetry in your memory and the path to your truth.

* * *

Jon Magidsohn, originally from Toronto, Canada, has been featured in The Guardian, The Bangalore Mirror, Brevity, Hippocampus, Full Grown People, Chicago Literati and has written about fatherhood for dadzclub.com, the Good Men Project and Today’s Parent magazine. He has an MA in Creative Nonfiction from City University, London. His memoir, Immortal Highway, will be released in October, 2015. 

If you’d like to work on your memoir with Jon, do contact The Writing Coach here.

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