I write historical fiction novels and short stories; I don’t read memoirs, have no intention of writing mine, and the thing that would never get a place on my to-do list would be to take part in PWA’s Stories From Life course. Then an email arrived headed, ‘PWA Alumni Writing Competition ‘Electric Dreams; April 2026 – Winner!’ I was not expecting that. It’s the first time any of my creative writing has won anything.
The prize was a place on the Stories from Life course, starting in just three days. I was in two minds. What use would a course about writing memoir be for a writer of action/adventure historical fiction? On the face of it, not much. But I had won it. It was only four sessions over five weeks. I had greatly enjoyed and benefitted from the Edit Your Novel the Professional Way course. Why not give it a go? I was bound to learn something along the way. And it would give me an excuse to avoid mowing the lawn (well, maybe not).
My somewhat sceptical attitude disintegrated immediately under the demands of a freewriting exercise inspired by a piece of music; ‘Our House’ by Madness. This was revelatory, taking me back to my childhood. I was cramming words onto the page in a breathless ten-minute sprint. I had not intended to write about that, it just happened. There was a story there, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell it yet, let alone write it down. That led me to write, for Week 1’s final exercise, a piece about my mother: It was the 1950s and she had to give up her job just because she was getting married. My scene showed her hanging up her work uniform next to her wedding dress, and reflecting on the change she was about to experience. The feedback was constructive and my fellow participants wanted to know more about her.
Eye-opener No.1: To write that piece I used the same writing techniques and skills I’d learned over the years when writing novels.
I was hooked.
Week 2 was called ‘Turning Experience into Stories’. Encouraged by the positive feedback in week 1, for Week 2’s final exercise I wrote about an event from when I was nine or ten, involving wool and knitting needles. It was a draft, inevitably flawed, but its structure drew upon what I’d learned about how to structure a novel.
Eye-opener No.2A: The feedback revealed how I used objects to convey mood and thus emotion. I realised that I was most comfortable writing about objects, and that these, in the context of the scene, brought out the story’s emotions, something I had not consciously set out to achieve.
Week 3 was called ‘Polish Your Work’; word choice, description and detail, using sensory details, beginnings and endings, form and style; a lot to pack into one week! Now with the bit firmly between my teeth, that week’s final exercise was another piece about my childhood; assembling polystyrene Airfix kits with my dad. I deliberately packed this with the physical sensations I remembered: the feel, the smell, the sounds. Again, I concentrated on the physicality of the moment, not mentioning the emotions. The feedback said that the emotions came through very clearly from the actions.
There was something in this Stories From Life course that was working for me, something I had not expected and which was taking me by surprise, week after week. Recalling my memories was painful, writing them down was not easy, yet I found that once I’d started, I quickly dropped into my writing zone just as I did when writing fiction. I was using the same mental muscles. And the easiest things for me to write about were the descriptions of objects and how my characters interacted with them.
Eye-opener No.2B: there is something in how I describe things that is intensely emotive. Note that this insight is also a result of a recent PWA webinar with Fiona Ford, called ‘Finding Your Voice’. Serendipity? You bet!
Week 4, the final session, on ‘Editing’. I was already familiar with most of this, having recently completed PWA’s Edit Your Novel the Professional Way course (it’s brilliant, but that’s another story) but, and this is a Big Positive ‘but’, at the heart of this session was the idea of turning life experience into a readable and gripping narrative. By now I was fully on board with this idea. I decided to be even more experimental than I had in my previous exercises, and write a piece about my mother in four ‘acts’, each with a different POV and style. I had never tried anything like that before and looking at her through a writer’s eyes felt liberating.
The floodgate was open: I had been skirting around some things in the previous exercises. In Week 4 I confronted them head on. It clearly worked. The feedback showed me the power a good narrative has to evoke emotions. Again, I had not set out deliberately to do so, I had set out to try different forms of writing, but the effect on my fellow students was staggering.
Eye-opener No. 3: I can use POV to push the reader towards or away from the emotions to guide them towards understanding my story ‘from the inside’.
Eye-opener No.4: I got a better idea of where to look to find my voice and a clear idea of what it sounds like in the context of a memoir.
The course led me, step by step, to look at my mum and dad from a different perspective. I know from coaching that when someone looks at an event or a relationship or their career from a perspective other than their own, most times they have a revelatory insight. Same thing here.
Looking back at the desired outcomes from this course, two stand out: “greater confidence in turning experiences into gripping stories for others to enjoy”, and “improved use of language and awareness of your voice”. The course delivered both of these in full, with a cherry on the top for good measure.
I have, you might have already guessed, enjoyed this course immensely, learned much about what I can write and how I write and the effect my writing can have on a reader. What’s not to like?
Interested in exploring memoir?
Our Stories From Life course is a 5-week course which will help you turn your life experiences into compelling stories. Join our next group, starting 12 October 2026.
