Write With Me Club: July

The theme this month is writing essays

At the age of 47, having spent the last twenty nine years of my life making a living from words, I realised something this week that I am almost embarrassed to tell you (almost, but, you know me by now, I tend to just tell you anyway.)

It is this, and it is something I’m sure everyone else already knows, but forgive me for finally catching up: an essay is to try. It is, of course (OF COURSE!), from the french word essayer – literally to try.

Why has this only just dawned on me?

I knew the french, I spend my life writing essays, and yet what was so obviously staring me in the face was just not obvious to me at all. Yet when I think about it, isn’t that also why we write, to see more clearly that which is often so obviously staring us in the face, to put a name or other words to it, to create a container to hold those thoughts that wander without boundary?

Or at least that is how it feels to me.

I am writing a proposal for a book this weekend (or rather expanding on it), an essay collection, and it was in the course of some research that this blindingly obvious etymological fact hit me square between the eyes. An essay is to try, an essay is to nudge closer to the truth, to describe an individual experience and make it universal – or attempt to.

And speaking of universal, I found this nice quote from the American author, Bret Lot that I wanted to share with you: “I have written elsewhere that the form known as creative non-fiction is something akin to Russian nesting dolls, one person inside another inside another. But instead of finding smaller selves inside the self, the opposite occurs: we find nested inside that smallest of selves a larger self, and a larger self inside that, until we come to the whole of humanity within our own hearts.”

That for me sums up essays, and memoir, and any kind of self-reflective creative non-fiction, how we can find the whole universe in a small vignette. Isn’t it a lovely image?

So all of this is to say that it seems to me an ideal time to make the theme of our Write With Me Club this month: writing essays.

You should know by now – although welcome new subscribers – that my Write With Me Club takes place on zoom on the first Monday of every month between 7pm and 8pm BST around my dining table. Ooh, and it’s also a chance for you to sit in my new blue room with me.

Each month I send out the link for the zoom at midday on the day of the meet-up. So if you would like to join, you have just over 24 hours to become a paid subscriber and come along. You can do that by clicking the button below:

Not only does becoming a paid member mean you get an hour with me every month, but you also have full access to all my posts and my archive, which includes more than 24 essays on writing craft by other brilliant and bestselling fiction and non-fiction authors.

PLUS remember White Ink has been selected TWICE this year as a Substack Feature Publication 2024.

This month’s meet-up will be slightly different to others in that it will be a bit more practical, exercises ‘in class’ so to speak, and I’ve got some good ones for you which I hope you’ll find really inspiring, so bring a pen and paper, or your computer, whatever you write on.

And also, just to say, I’ve realised that I’m away for the August Write With Me Club, so after tomorrow night our next meet up witll be September 2.

Can’t wait to see you all tomorrow night! And don’t forget to subscribe to receive the zoom details: