Writer and musician
Kia ora, Wishing you a fabulous start to 2025! Here we are at the first chapter of the year again 😉 So now’s a good time to ask you: Can you spare 30 minutes a few days a week to write your memoir? Think about it, the average person can write nearly 400 words in …
Kia ora! Sometimes readers send me stories that make me smile, and today I have one from Cathy Monnington. When she finishes writing it, her life story promises to be very entertaining. Before I share her words, I think it’s a great idea to share some insight into what you did for Christmas, in your …
Kia ora, It’s good to tune into your world today. How’s that story of yours coming along? I’m editing a life story/family history for someone who is writing it for future generations, including for those who she might never meet. This makes me very happy. They will get to know her well through her stories …
Kia ora from rainy Golden Bay 🌧️ This week I’m focused on book design and I wanted to remind you: it’s never too early to thinking about your book cover. I have four suggestions for you: Start gathering examples of book covers you love now, because at some point your story will need a cover. …
Continue reading "Start thinking about your book cover now 📙"
Kia ora from Golden Bay, How’s that story of yours coming along today? Even if it’s simply bubbling away inside you, having not yet been written. That’s still something. That still matters. And I hope one day you’ll share it with the world. A few weeks ago I asked you for 100 words from your …
Today I want to encourage you to celebrate how far you’ve come in writing your memoir, family history or life story. This includes those of you who haven’t started writing yet, who are still researching and organising your information (a big job in itself!). I was reminded of this after talking to a beloved participant …
One of the reasons I love memoir writing is that these stories reveal the unknown rich history within each person. The older we get, the more stories we carry within us. To have gone to the trouble of organising them into a book is not only a very considerate thing to do for our families …
Kia ora, hello, how's your story coming along this week? So - your writing routine. Let’s talk about that. Do you have one? Comment here and let me know? I’m curious. After a few years of teaching folk to write their stories, I’ve moved into the ‘yes, you do need a writing routine’ camp. Before …
I write to you from my other living room - The Dangerous Kitchen cafe, in downtown Tākaka. How’s your memoir feeling today? Honestly, email me back with three words to describe how it’s feeling, I’d love to know! I’m in the design stage of two books right now. This is where we take the text …
Continue reading "Preparing for the design stage of your book 📙"
Kia ora, how is your story coming along? You may know by now that I’m big on letting your first draft be gloriously imperfect, so that you can get on with writing it, without questioning whether it’s good enough. Because usually, it’s more than good enough and it’s a wondrous thing to have written it. …
Kia Ora, How’s your memoir coming along this week? Whatever stage you’re at with it, just keep going. Last week my 16 year old son Kāhu headed off on an adventure to the West Coast of the South Island with his dad to sit his restricted licence test. The nerves were high. For my boy, …
Continue reading "Writing about that time you did that hard thing."
Kia ora, how are you? Today I’m writing to you from my cosy kitchen to encourage you to keep going, keep writing your memoir, life story or family history. Think of the satisfaction of seeing your family reading it in the future, and of knowing you’re leaving them with the facts, and your perspective of …
Kia ora, hello you. Just a short blog tonight, which is fitting for a question that someone on my memoir course asked our guest speaker Gerard Hindmarsh earlier this week: ‘How do I know if my story is too long and rambly?’ Actually I may have made the word ‘rambly’ up. But moving on, here …
Continue reading "9 tips to avoid writing a long and rambling memoir"
Kia ora, hello there 👋🏼 How are you? And how is your precious story? Last night award winning author Gerard Hindmarsh spoke to members of our Write Your Memoir course and I wanted to pass on something he said that inspired me. He said: ‘get your blood moving’ before you write. He likes to cut …
I was talking to an avid reader of my newsletters earlier today and she told me about her impressively long (90,000 words, after being edited down) story. She said it was quite dense with text. That got me thinking about something I often use to break up text, in memoirs, and anywhere I want to …
Kia Ora, hello there lovely, I’m loving the cosines of winter. We’ve had a few days of rain and it’s been a great time to write, sitting as close as I can get to our impressively real looking fake fire, ha ha! I’m most productive as a writer in the mornings. How about you? If …
Continue reading "When you write, and 100 words of your story"
Charlotte Squire 