This Writing Life
A Dialogue: Join us This post also appeared first under my section Write It!
Mary Tabor + Eleanor Anstruther have joined forces to create a collaborative and interactive resource on the craft of writing. We two invite you to send both of us, at the same time, your questions in Notes, tagging us both. Once a month, we—Mary and Eleanor—will choose a question, meet together on video to discuss it, a filmed dialogue between us that addresses your writing issue. We’ll then publish the video and a short, written answer on both our sites for free. Will wonders never cease! We'll also email that answer privately to you, so that you’ve time to digest, respond, and come back to us. You’ll need to subscribe to both of us if you want that little bit of extra. Now, you may be thinking for free? But here’s the thing: It’s beautiful to be valued for what you do, it’s beautiful to give things away, and these two aspects don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You can still upgrade to paid on our sites; you can still send us the message that you value our work by taking out a paid subscription. You won’t get anything extra except that warm feeling of giving something back. And if you don’t, or can’t or just want to wait and see, that’s okay too. You won’t find yourself in a different room—you’ll still be welcome because everyone, whether you pay or not, has value to us.
Nothing makes us happier than talking about writing. Get in touch and we’ll put the kettle on, light the fire, and concentrate on you. Whether you’re facing the blank page for the first time or have fifteen novels and a memoir under your belt, whether you’re a script writer, novelist, playwright, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, we want to know what’s bothering you in this writing life, and we want to help you write it.
p.s. from Mary: I have a full course that I introduce here—the link is here for you to take a gander—it’s free….: The collaboration with me and Eleanor,
Link to: Our introduction to all this — in case you missed it.
They are separate groups but we first linked to my course: https://marytabor.substack.com/p/write-it-how-to-get-started that is simply an additional option.
Love,
Mary and Eleanor
I'll toss out a question: what are your rules for invention in memoir? I inadvertently touched off a debate about this in a comment on one of David Roberts's posts recently. I have my own thoughts about this, which I will share in a craft essay soon. But I'm curious how both of you navigate those perennial questions about acceptable levels of fiction in memoir writing. How much "emotional truth" is too much? How does one write dialogue in memoir without fabricating the past and destroying one's reliability in the process?
@Mary L Tabor and @Eleanor Anstruther. Hello! I have a question. Some writers are proposing writing their unpublished book through chapters on Substack. If I were to do that, how would I go about it, and should we promote said chapters on Notes?