Ask the Author: Caroline Baum
Answered Questions (6)
Caroline Baum
By writing something else: anything... by talking to a writing coach like Alison Manning at A Mind of One's Own, who has strategies about what to do, by not listening to that inner critic voice too much when it tells you you are hopeless. For those embarking on the journey Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way is a classic place to start. I did a workshop with her years ago in NY for an evening and it was great for rebooting your confidence.
Caroline Baum
Working in your pyjamas! No seriously: being free to work from home is a big plus. Being a storyteller, connecting with readers, belonging to a community of writers and being part of that great big conversation .
Caroline Baum
Read read read and when you think you know what you want to write, then target your reading and tailor it to that genre, so that you read the very best examples of what you are attempting to do. We all build on the work of others.
Caroline Baum
A biography which is going to be a bit of a hybrid between the life of a 19th/20th century Frenchwoman and a continuation of the memoir form, so it's going to be about me and about my subject locked in this dance together. It's not the conventional or orthodox way of doing things, but that appeals to me. I was lucky enough to win the 2015 Hazel Rowley Fellowship and Hazel did not play by the rules so I am thinking of her as I go, hoping for some of her talent and courage.
Caroline Baum
I don't wait for inspiration otherwise I'd be waiting a long time! I just sit down and get going and sometimes inspiration comes in the form of a phrase or an image, or a connection between two ideas. For more on this I really recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic, a very wise and helpful book on how creativity works. I think the idea of inspiration is pretty out dated and unhelpful. You just have to show up.<
Caroline Baum
I wrote memoir fragments first as articles for magazines like The Good Weekend. The response to them was what encouraged me to tell more of my story. The drama of my family unfolded and I felt the need to record it for others going through the same thing.
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