This week Pam reports in from Lille in France with some exciting news about her upcoming release Because You're Mine!

She also chats to debut memoirist Lindsay Bartels about Imogen in Waiting, which follows Lindsay and her husband as they wrestle with whether to use a stored female embryo that carries the BRCA mutation Lindsay has, after Lindsay’s breast cancer diagnosis in her 20s.

Lindsay discusses her path from filmmaking and architecture to writing via blogging, and explains drafting the memoir longhand using a four-notebook, three-act structure, then transcribing, revising, cutting scenes, and deepening interiority with editors at Third Rail Press.

This is a thought-provoking, uplifting conversation for both readers and writers.

00:18 Podcast Welcome And Travel Update

05:56 Host Updates And Subscriber Perks

09:03 Meet The Guest Lindsay

09:41 Lindsay’s Creative Path

15:36 Writing The Memoir Framework

17:58 Notebook One Cancer Diagnosis

19:59 Notebook Two IVF And The Embryo

21:01 Notebook Three Sydney COVID And Legal Hurdles

26:44 Letting Go And The Emotional Toll

27:53 Notebook Four Return Home And Surgery

32:27 Writing to Imogen

33:55 Transcribing and Revising

36:25 Early Readers Feedback

38:21 Querying and Developmental Edit

40:05 Third Rail Press Origin

43:36 Final Revisions and Trust

45:58 The Big Ethical Question

47:56 Family Gene Background

50:31 Keeping the Memoir Human

51:41 Holding the Finished Book

53:08 Events and Writing Community

56:51 Where to Buy and Farewell

SHOW NOTES:

Writes4Women

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Lindsay Bartels

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Pamela Cook

www.pamelacook.com.au

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Fiction Feedback @ Writing NSW: click here

This episode produced by  Pamela Cook for Writes4Women on unceded Dharawal country.