Diary of a Writer - Cecilia Poullain

A very short episode about yoghurt...

In this episode, I explain why I haven't posted in a while. A lot of the stuff I have been writing is about people in my family, and I don't want to hurt them and I will need to check with them before I include things about them in my book. I am fascinated in the different influences of my father and grandfathers and my mother and my grandmothers on me. And in the evoluti

I have been working on the structure of the book, and had a great idea this morning. The first part of the book would be about what happened when I followed the masculine, and the second half would be about finding the feminine.

Today, I wrote about the relatively minor, hyper-privileged decision to move out of our holiday flat in Dinard to a house further west along the coast in Saint-Cast, and all that it taught my about making decisions.

I am still trying to work out how to structure the section on death and endings. I have made some headway with the part on death, but I don't yet know how to fit in the part on endings. A very short piece today on the advantages and disadvantages of being alive - and being dead.

I spent a long time this morning trying to work out how to structure this section of the book. I had initially written it as a series of reactions to deaths and leaving places, but that doesn't really work. I'm trying to find the through-line - the central dramatic question - and I think it might be something like: "can I come to peace with death and endings?"

I had a section called " I can, I can't" in which I was looking at why there were some situations in which I persuaded myself something was impossible and others in which I persisted. But I realised that I needed a central dramatic question with a yes or no answer.My central dramatic question will probably be: "can I change my limiting beliefs?" which is wh

A slightly messy text on my happiest memories. I have shifted this section of my book to just before "Dreams and Visions" because I realised that memories are the flip-side of dreams and visions - memories are in the past; dreams and visions are in the future.

I am up to 74 000 words. I have structured my work into themes and I have started rewriting within the themes. I initially wrote three different texts on time - I have now combined them into a single text.

I write about leaving Sydney to come back to Paris. I had no idea that I would still be living in Paris 27 years later. I write about other departures, and what it means to live on the other side of the world from family and friends. I write about just how hard it was to find a job in a foreign country.