“Having such a huge adventure to draw on, did the words flow freely when you wrote your book?”

That was a question asked of me by a man in Bobcaygeon last week where I was talking to a group about my memoir, Ready to Come About. 

My response was an immediate and emphatic, “NO!”

The truth is, whether you are writing a novel or a true story, writing is darn hard.

As Miriam Toews, one of my favourite authors, once put it, “You have to leave your blood on every page.”

However, fortunately, there are resources out there to help. Primary among them, for me, was learning all I could about the art and craft of story-telling through classes in Creative Writing; the first, and most pivotal, being Brian Henry’s Writing Personal Stories 101, over fourteen years ago.

Coincidentally, Brian is offering that exact same course online this summer, and fantastically, he has asked me, again, to be his guest speaker, specifically on the topic of memoir! Click here for details.

Delighted to have this opportunity to pay it forward, my response to Brian was an immediate and emphatic, “YES!”