Writing Your Self

Writing Your Self is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to explore personal material in their writing. It examines how many writers use personal subject matter in memoirs, poems, journals and novels.

Part One focuses on universal experiences including childhood, identity, adult relationships and loss as well as more specific issues such as displacement and disability, physical and mental illness and abuse. Throughout the book writers, including the authors, give frank, firsthand accounts of their own experiences and how they have tackled writing about them. 

Part Two begins with a series of techniques for approaching personal material which include practical exercises and examples. It also considers the differences between raw and finished writing and the validity of each and offers ideas for developing work.

With its wide range of writers and the exciting possibilities it offers, Writing Your Self is a definitive book for exploring personal literature and life writing.

A complete resource for studying life writing - one of the key genres studied within creative writing.

Myra Schneider is a poet and tutor for The Poetry School in London, UK. She is author of Writing My Way Through Cancer (Jessica Kingsley, 2003) and Writing for Self-Discovery (with John Killick, Element Books, 1998).

John Killick has been a teacher and education officer in prisons and more recently has worked with people with dementia. He is a poet and literary journalist.