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 Joanna Penn. And this is episode number 739 of the podcast, and it is Friday the 23rd of

February, 2024, as I record this. In today's show, I have a solo episode on writing a travel

memoir, which I wrote and recorded as part of my Kickstarter stretch goals for pilgrimage, lessons learned from solo walking three ancient ways,

which is now over a year old, which is kind of crazy. Now, I had thought I would turn these notes

into a bigger book at some point, but as you heard in my 15-year pivot back in December,

I'm now focusing on other projects.

But I wanted to share it with you in case it is helpful.

And even if you're just, if you're thinking and writing a memoir or considering it or wondering about what it might mean, it's not just about travel.

I cover the particular challenge of memoir.

What kind of book are you writing anyway, vulnerability and emotional honesty,

how to capture your experiences, writing about real places and people,

as well as your character arc, as you are the character in a memoir,

truth with a capital T versus truth with a small T, as well as how hard editing is with such a personal, and for me and many people, a very long first draft that needs a lot of hard

editing, as well as publishing choices and marketing. So I cover a lot today, and it was

interesting, so I also had, obviously I had the notes.

I wrote the notes and then I recorded it as a little audio book really. And I, I pasted the

transcript into onto the show notes at the creative pen.com with links to all the books, the resources

I mention and photos as well. So I had a lot of fear

...