Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur,

bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, publishing options and marketing ideas for your book.

You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more information at

TheCreativepen.com. And that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show.

Hello, creatives. I'm Gerana Penn. And this is episode number 696 of the podcast, and it is Sunday the 4th of June,

2023 as I record this back in Bath.

In today's show, I'm talking to Marion Roach Smith about writing memoir.

Now, I've had Marion on the show several times over the last decade to talk about memoir. And I love talking to her.

She is so wise and supportive. But this time, our discussion was a little different, as I have

actually written a memoir. And it's funny because I looked back at the questions I asked in previous

episodes with Marion. And I've always been curious about writing memoir but my

questions this time are different because I have experience. Obviously my, the memoir I've

just, well I wrote earlier this year, pilgrimage, lessons learned from solo walking three ancient

ways. And given that memoir is so personal, I felt quite exposed talking about it in

this interview, which to be honest is how memoir makes you feel. It is a terrifying form of writing for sure,

but perhaps that's what makes it even more difficult and therefore worthwhile as a creative

project.

And my appreciation of the genre is certainly greater since I have wrestled my own into the world.

So that's coming up in the interview section.

In publishing and book marketing news, right, this is a biggie,

especially if you have as bigger backlist as I do,

and I know some of you have bigger backlists. So this is a big e. Amazon has changed their category system. So if you publish through Amazon KDP, you can now choose three categories within the category

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