London Writers' Salon masterclass on personal essays
It’s me, Suchandrika Chakrabarti!
I’m a freelance journalist, podcaster and comedian based in London, England.
I make Freelance Pod.
You can also find me on Instagram at Suchandrika / freelancepod.
Hi there,
A mini extra newsletter to let you know that I’m delivering a new and extended personal essays masterclass with the London Writer’s Salon next week!
Masterclass: Break into Freelance Writing Using Personal Essays is a three-hour session in which we’ll cover in detail:
What a personal essay is
Why it’s the sweet spot between journalistic and literary writing
How to know if you’re ready to write about a difficult subject
The extended metaphors in some of my favourite personal essays, and what they add to the reading experience
Who’s publishing this kind of work - we’ll look at some live calls for pitches from editors whom you could pitch immediately
Bonus: We’ll deconstruct some of my successful pitches, and then there will be a live pitching exercise, so you go through the steps yourself. This should take a lot of the fear out of the process when you do it for real.
Personal essays have changed my writing career, helping me find the subjects I want to (need to) write about. Writing them has also fed into how I write stand-up, and pushed me into being more creative because of the structure the form imposes on writing.
Personal essays have also me build a reputation as a writer. Recently, I was commissioned to write one for this new journal that has just been set up by the journalism departments at the universities of Birmingham and Cardiff. It was a real honour to be approached, and an amazing experience to get to write it - plus it looks gorgeous!
If you’ve got any questions about the masterclass, feel free to reply to this email with them.
Also, if you know that your networks would be interested in this workshop, please do share widely.
Here’s my answer to why we write personal essays:
A couple of literary links
Agents and Books from literary agent Kate McKean is a fab newsletter, and I really like the latest issue, Writer’s Block: Solved
It centres on this blog post on shame and writer’s block by the writer Alexander Chee
Why We Write Memoir: A Reading List (from Longreads)
There’s some lovely writing in this Twitter thread (and why not add yours?):
Yes, we all have those days / weeks / months / 2020s
Thank you so much for reading!
If you enjoy my work & fancy buying me a virtual coffee, I’d be delighted (and will hopefully experience a virtual caffeine rush):