Ask the Author: Gill Mann
Answered Questions (3)
Gill Mann
- Read as much as you can and try to be a conscious reader, noticing what you think works and what doesn’t, and then trying to work out why. We can learn a great deal from other writers.
- Go on courses, join a writing group, and put your work up for critiquing. It’s terribly hard to hear criticism, especially if your writing feels very personal to you, but it will help you both to develop a thicker skin and to work out what advice to ignore and what to accept. Hearing other people’s views will, in time, help you to understand and gain confidence in your own voice and the things that matter to you.
- Stay true to yourself but also stay open to ideas. I have always written from life and have seen myself as a memoirist and non-fiction writer because I’m an observer rather than a creator. But when a member of my writing group challenged me to write a piece of fiction, I found it really inspiring to discover I could. As a result, I’ve completed a couple of short stories based on the theme of therapy and will go back to those in the future.
- Go on courses, join a writing group, and put your work up for critiquing. It’s terribly hard to hear criticism, especially if your writing feels very personal to you, but it will help you both to develop a thicker skin and to work out what advice to ignore and what to accept. Hearing other people’s views will, in time, help you to understand and gain confidence in your own voice and the things that matter to you.
- Stay true to yourself but also stay open to ideas. I have always written from life and have seen myself as a memoirist and non-fiction writer because I’m an observer rather than a creator. But when a member of my writing group challenged me to write a piece of fiction, I found it really inspiring to discover I could. As a result, I’ve completed a couple of short stories based on the theme of therapy and will go back to those in the future.
Gill Mann
Writing became a way for me to spend time with my son following his passing - to talk to him. It also became a way for me to process my grief. For two years I wrote whenever and wherever I could, but I was writing simply for me. It was only when a friend lost her son too, read my journal and wrote to me about it, that I started to see it as something more. She said it had helped her, that she’d felt as though I was walking alongside her, holding her hand, that it had made her feel less alone. She urged me to think about publishing, said it would help others facing loss, and that really spoke to me because, as a psychotherapist, I’d come to realise that loss is a part of each of our lives and that most of my work, at its heart, is about helping people to face the pain of loss – of every kind - and to find a way through it. Her letter was the prompt I needed to start working on turning my journal into a narrative that tells a story for others to read.
Gill Mann
My favourite genres are memoir, writing from life and fiction; anything that explores what it is to be human. These are the books currently waiting for me on my bedside table:
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek
Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge
Coming Undone by Terry White
Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Explaining Humans by Dr Camilla Pang
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek
Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge
Coming Undone by Terry White
Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Explaining Humans by Dr Camilla Pang
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