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Last Wednesday, I emceed the launch of Blaise van Hecke’s memoir The Road to Tralfamadore is Bathed in River Water. Here’s some of the praise for my efforts: ‘One of the unheralded emcees in entertainment today.’ – Variety ‘A delight from start to finish.’ – Oprah Winfrey ‘On this performance, surely an outside chance to host the 2019 Oscars.’ – Empire But that’s hardly surprising. However, this is a blog not about emceeing, but about memoir and autobiography. (If you’re wondering what the difference is between autobiography and memoir, an autobiography might be about somebody’s life, while a memoir will be about a certain time or a…
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Lots of people think writing is easy, or should be easy. If you have an imagination, you can tell a story – right? But that’s like saying if you can imagine a house, you should be able to build one. Surely there’s nothing too involved there? Dig a foundation, lay down some bricks, build four walls, throw a roof on top – what could possibly go wrong? It annoys me (I’m easily annoyed) that people think that writing is easy, like writers can sit at the computer and hammer out 9,000 words in a single sitting. No problem. Unfortunately not. Writing is painstaking. Whatever’s in your imagination has to be…