To speak up is not about speaking louder, it is about feeling entitled to voice a wish." This speaks to me personally. To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL.” Human emotions are complex, and people love reading about other people’s relational fails or successes. Share some of your interpersonal stories and tips with these topic ideas.

If you love to write and take photos, the photo essay has been waiting for you to discover it! Photo essays offer an immersive experience for your reader. If maternity is the only female signifier, we know that the baby on our lap, if it is healthy and well cared for, will eventually turn away from our breast and see someone else. He will see another. he will see the world, and he will fall in love with it. Some mothers go mad because the world that made them feel worthless is the same world with which their children fall in love.Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.” esgotante uma mulher aprender como se há de tornar um sujeito, e é bastante duro aprender como se há de tornar escritora.»

Pro Tip: Don’t just go for the spectacular beaches of Costa Rica. Go to hear the dancing melody of the Spanish language, talk to the artisans selling their handmade products, and meet the families growing coffee for generations. How do we approach the things we know that break our hearts? What do we do with that unwanted knowledge and that broken heart that keeps pounding inside us, hurting and surviving?

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To become a writer, I had to learn to interrupt, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then louder, and then to just speak in my own voice which is not loud at all." A writer is an explorer. She knows she wants to get somewhere, but she doesn’t know if the somewhere even exists yet. It is still to be created. Don’t sit around looking inward. That’s boring. In the end your navel contains only lint. You have to propel yourself outward, young writer. Magazines and online publications are always looking for travel and adventure stories, so if you like to travel, you should be writing about it! There are several approaches you can take when writing about travel, so use these ideas if you’re overwhelmed by the thought of writing about your last adventure. Writing prompts are something even the best writers use at times to spark creativity, find new ways of expression, and help with focusing on a topic or theme. When traveling, ask for local tips about neighborhoods that are less safe for foreigners or out-of-towners. You might ask someone where their family stays when they come to town or what hotels have a good reputation.

Get in a writer’s group. Even if you’re an introvert, being in a supportive community can change everything for you as a writer. Writing can be lonely, and you need support to stay motivated, get fresh ideas, and have your ideas tested and pushed even further. I appreciate the points Levy makes. She does not, however, tie these thoughts together; and I feel dissatisfied as I move on to Part 2 How are you feeling today? Get into the practice of reflecting on your feelings and emotions, either at the start or the end of the day. You’ll build emotional intelligence through self-awareness as you write down your feelings. I’d enjoyed elements of several of her books ( Swimming Home, Hot Milk and especially The Man Who Saw Everything). I thought her stories quirky, her dialogue taught and interesting but I found her characters sometimes hard to like and a couple of her stories I found a little soulless. So I thought it would be interesting to delve into the life of this author a little, to discover what experiences might have helped shape this person. But this is no ordinary autobiography: to start with it’s really very short - the first part of a trilogy of memoirs - and secondly its structure is really that of an extended essay, in fact a response to Orwell’s Why I Write.We have to have something happen to them: something that jolts our tired hearts awake. Make it traumatic, make it mournful, make it jubilant, it doesn’t matter – just allow your reader to care for the physical body that your words evoke, the person behind the language. Later on in the story we can settle down with them and get to know them in a wider sense. Make each character distinct. Give them verbal tics. And never forget that people talk away from what they really mean With that in mind, when you travel, try to make human connections. It can be incredibly lonely when you’re traveling, especially in another country. And while it may be tempting to simply eat the food and see the sights, slow down a little and interact with locals in the location you’re visiting. After all, this is their home. Taking time to talk to others, ask questions, and even listen to their stories is a way to respect the environment you’re visiting as an outsider. You have to show up for work. You have to sit in the chair and fight the blankness. Don’t leave your desk.’ Illustration: Janne Iivonen

Keep a source file. Any time you come across an interesting study, article, or image, save that in a file or bookmark it on your computer. When you’re feeling bogged down or uninspired, cull through your sources to get inspiration. Every work of fiction is organised somehow – and the best of them are more profoundly organised than they ever let on. Our stories rely on the human instinct for architecture. Structure is, essentially, a container for content. The shape into which your story gets is a house slowly built from the foundation up. Or maybe it’s a tunnel, or a skyscraper, or a palace, or even a moving caravan, driven forward by your characters. In fact, structure can be any number of things: you just have to make sure that it doesn’t become an elaborate hole in the ground into which we bury ourselves, unable to claw out. A writer is not someone who thinks obsessively about writing, or talks about it, or plans it, or dissects it, or even reveres it: a writer is the one who puts his arse in the chair when the last thing he wants to do is have his arse in the chair. Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory as a young woman and shape it to her need. This is the first volume in Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography series of memoirs (later followed by “Things I Don’t Want to Know” but before “Real Estate”) this was published in 2013, two years after her Booker shortlisting for “Swimming Home”Then again, you might stumble and fall. No matter. It is, after all, a work of the imagination. You won’t die trying. The only true way to expand your world is to inhabit an otherness beyond ourselves. There is one simple word for this: empathy. Don’t let them fool you. Empathy is violent. Empathy is tough. Empathy can rip you open. Once you go there, you can be changed. Get ready: they will label you sentimental. But the truth is that the cynics are the sentimental ones. They live in a cloud of their own limited nostalgia. They have no muscularity at all. Remember, the world is so much more than one story. We find in others the ongoing of ourselves. In "Sheer Egoism", we fast forward to Levy as a teenager now living in London. She is still trying to write and she says that "Writing made me feel wiser than I actually was". I had been told to say my thoughts out loud and not just in my head but I decided to write them down."