Episode 8 - Common Mistakes and Mishaps Writing Your Memoir
(& How to Avoid Them!)
In this episode, you’ll learn how you can avoid all those common mistakes and mishaps when writing your first memoir or book.
You’ll learn the most common issues and problems that you can face into when writing a memoir – and how to avoid them!
What will Aunt Edna / My Parents / My Kids think?
I know right.
Writing a memoir is a huge and scary undertaking.
Besides the common problem of finding the time to write the damn thing, there’s also all the worries about what others are going to think, whether your Aunt Edna or your Mum or your brother will ever talk to you again….
And don’t get me started on trying to get the thing published.
In this week’s episode, we’re talking to Dr Sally Breen about all these common mishaps and mistakes when it comes to writing (particularly memoir) – and how to avoid them.
Sally is the real deal when it comes to writers. She’s had her work published globally and is so damn smart on the writing front she actually TEACHES it. Sally works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Griffith University on the Gold Coast – and in fact, used to teach little old me!
If you want to know the most common mishaps and mistakes when it comes to memoir writing and how to avoid them – be sure to check it out!
What's covered in this episode
- How Netflix could be undoing your creative writing efforts
- Difference between Micro and Macro (the detail of the story versus the intent or meaning of the story)
- Managing risk and writing about other people in your memoir
- Handling harsh feedback (and why you should actually love it!)
- Where and when inspiration can strike and how to grab it with both hands
- Conjunctions (words that link to other words) eg. it, as, that, which
- Personification and personification of emotion
- Cliches – get rid of them!
About Dr Sally Breen
Dr Sally Breen is the author of The Casuals (2011) winner of the Varuna Harper Collins Manuscript Prize and Atomic City (2013) shortlisted for the People’s Choice Book of the Year QLD Literary Awards 2014.
Her short form creative and non-fiction work has been published widely, nationally and internationally, including features in Overland, Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Guardian London, The Age, Review of Australian Fiction, Best Australian Stories, The Conversation, Hemingway Shorts and The Asia Literary Review.
Sally is senior lecturer in creative writing at Griffith University and executive director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators.
I loved this podcast, brilliant questions and very informative. Thank you.