Whoever we are, and whatever we write, we bring ourselves to it: our experiences, our insights, our imagination, our worldview. In this month’s issue, the theme is ‘Your Life, Your Words’, and WM puts the focus on some of the many ways our personal, lived experience can feed into what we write – and how we write it.
Creative non-fiction, where writers use fictional techniques to tell stories from real-life, is one of the most exciting areas in creative writing right now. This month, we’re launching a new regular slot on how to write creative non-fiction with Jenny Alexander – see p35. You’ll also find a brilliant piece about writing from lived experience from Greta Solomon (p8), which explores some of the things to be wary of before you bare your soul in print.
Drawing from life is an integral part of writing fiction too. Leo Vardiashvili’s novel Hard by a Great Forest is one of the year’s most anticipated debuts and we’re thrilled to include Leo’s advice on writing place as he reveals how he conjured the Tbilisi he left at the age of 12. We’re equally delighted to have author Sarah Marsh’s insightful piece examining how being Deaf affected the language and voice of her debut novel A Sign of Her Own. Our star interview is the glorious Daisy Goodwin, who talks about the importance of taking opera lessons in order to write about the iconic Maria Callas (p16). And if you write non-fiction, crime writer Clare Mackintosh reveals the heartbreaking personal story behind her first work of non-fiction (p38), and ghostwriter Joy Hindle explains what it’s like to work behind the scenes to tell someone else’s life story (p12).