You Want to Write Your Memoir: The Value of a Writing Class

Writers at work

On the final evening of the 2016 Master Classes in Memoir, at the Michael King Writers Centre, I sat in the sitting room, beneath the portrait of New Zealand historian and biographer Michael King by Annette Isbey, and observed nine writers, their heads bowed in concentration, hands moving swiftly across the white page, writing with the timer on, fifteen minutes only, writing rapidly, as I have trained them to do, free of the censor judging their work, because they know that when the timer rings there will be additional time, immediately, to edit what they have just written.

​The only sounds in the room were the rubbing of pens over paper and the fridge humming in the kitchen next door. Below in the garden mutabilis roses were still flowering in May amongst the pale purple and lilac velvet flowers of salvia Leucantha and the spikes of orange and pink dahlias while over the sweep of grass, above the road that winds down the volcanic cone of Takarunga, I could see the city shining across the slick of black water that is Waitemata harbour at night. Again and again I feel the magic of this special setting.

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