Hello fellow writers, and this August’s update is a book review on writing for writers of ‘The Situation and the Story: the art of personal narrative’ by Vivian Gornik. The full video is now at Lesson 59 of the Complete Freelance Writing Course.

This is an interesting and inspiring book for anyone writing personal memoir, essays or wanting to strengthen a journalistic voice. Vivian Gornik’s memoir ‘Fierce Attachments’ was described by New York Times book reviewers as ‘best memoir of the past 50 years’ in 2019.

She gives a unique take on one of my favourite writers, Joan Didion, analysing her essay on migraine, and showing how she uses detached empathy to connect to readers and to bring them on a voyage of discovery. She shows how if you know your ‘who’, the persona from which you write, then your ‘why’, that is your intention will follow.

Local Literary Festival

Some of you readers are localish to me in Wales, so I just wanted to sign of this post with a reel about a session I’m anchoring next Friday 7th August at 4.30pm at the small, but perfectly-formed Llangwmlitfest.

In keeping with the truth theme in the post above, I’ll be chatting to two terrific storytellers about how they convey recentish history in their novels, and what they feel they owe to the ‘truth’ as they see it…

Please do come and say hello, if you make it along!