If you want to learn more about my new Life Story Jar programme, the self-paced writing course to help writers of all levels to write and preserve their precious family stories, then please grab a cuppa and watch my new video.

I don’t know about you but I’m a big fan of Masterchef on the telly. It always seems to me that the chefs that get the most enthusiastic and throw the biggest variety of ‘stuff’ on the plate get voted off, while those who make something utterly delicious out of a small and carefully selected number of ingredients get through. Only today I watched Tom get through to the next round with his simple asparagus and hollandaise sauce. It’s the same with writing.

Ian and I have just spent a few days in Sicily and I knew that the trip would provide me with something inspiring for this newsletter, I just wasn’t quite sure what that would be. On the first morning we set off to visit the Greek and Roman amphitheatres for which Syracuse is famous. Within seconds I had stopped in my tracks.

“What’s that smell?” I asked. “It’s gorgeous. Like honey.”

“Oh yes,” Ian responded with more enthusiasm than I might have expected. “Where is it coming from?”

I looked around and noticed that the grove of olive trees at the roadside seemed to have been planted in a meadow of little white flowers. The flowers looked like the alyssum that Brits like to use in their rockeries. “Maybe that’s what gives local honey its flavour?” I wondered and we walked on, vowing to check it out on Wikipedia later*.

Less than an hour later, in gardens that have been created out of an old quarry I saw what would be the first of many lemon trees. I remembered that Sicily is famous for its lemons. 

“Honey and lemon!” I said out loud to no one in particular. I could see a theme for the Inspirer was emerging. But then we visited the amphitheatres and I became enthralled by the deep pits that had been constructed beneath the stage for the ‘machinations’. More than two thousand years ago the theatre sets revolved, rose from stage doors and dropped away. Machinery was hidden from view but had a crucial part to play in the performance. I could feel a metaphor coming on and thought that maybe the machinations could represent the editing and punctuation, the rules and the conformities that turn the ‘shitty first draft’ of a piece of writing into something fit to be shown to the world. 

So now I had a lemon and honey theme and an importance of behind the scenes theme for this piece. Already I knew it was too much, and as the holiday progressed I began to see typical ingredients popping up in Sicilian cuisine. Pistachio nuts, blood oranges, wild fennel, ricotta cheese, sundried tomatoes, capers, olives, basil, swordfish, pumpkin, pasta, of course, courgetti, aubergine, aubergine and yet more aubergine and golly those lemons were enormous – almost as big as rugby balls. There was no way I was going to get away with cramming all those different ingredients into one dish. If I did, I was bound to get voted off (aka unsubscribed).

But it was obvious wasn’t it? The lesson I learned in Sicily and that I am sharing with you now is that of selecting the finest ingredients and then stopping. The lemon and the honey belong together. The Greek and Roman history in another. The aubergine, capers, courgette and tomatoes can be set aside for caponata. They cannot all go on one plate nor in one dish. It’s the same for a poem, an article, a book. The finished piece will be better for being made with fewer, finer ingredients so that each element is the star of its own show. Better still, as you live your life, paying attention and foraging for inspiration you can collect a host of ‘ingredients’ in you metaphorical basket and use them not for one piece but for several clear and simple pieces rather than a larger muddled one.  
 
“A painting is never finished, it simply stops in interesting places,” said artist and teacher Paul Gardner. Writing is like that too. We can fiddle and add to it forever, but we must learn to stop and remember less is more and that sometimes just lemon and honey is enough. 

*the flower did indeed turn out to be alyssum maritima (sweet alison) and yes it does smell of honey, though most Sicilian honey takes it flavor from orange blossom.

This month I want to introduce you to someone with whom, tragically, it is no longer possible for you to connect with. I first ‘met’ Lindsay de Feliz in 2011 when she contacted us to see if we might be interested in publishing her memoir called What About Your Saucepans? At first glance I thought it was a bit of an odd title, but when Lindsay went on to tell me it was about her move from a high-powered, well-paid job in England to become a lowly diving instructor in the Dominican Republic and how she had fallen in love with her life, the island and a local called Danilo. I was intrigued and asked to see a sample of her writing. I soon learned a number of things: this woman had a story to tell that was stranger and stronger than fiction; that she needed my help as a mentor and Jane’s help as editor to knock it into shape; that I really liked her and wanted to work with her; that “What about your saucepans?” was what her mother had said to her when Lindsay told her she was leaving the UK almost two decades earlier.

Over the next year or so she worked like a beaver on the manuscript while her real life began to get curiouser and curiouser. She had married a handsome local and became a generous and loving mother to his children, some of whom were very young indeed. Not only did she open her arms and her home to a new family but soon a four-legged family of stray cats and dogs joined the fold. Danilo became involved in local politics, ran for major and the two became affected by so much corruption the they were forced to run for the hills and into hiding. The book came out and we kept her quirky title, soon realising that Lindsay was embracing social media big time and many people now talked fondly of the Saucepans Lady, like me, they had never met but came to consider a friend. Her online marketing was second-to-none and sales were steady. By 2017 a sequel was inevitable as we followed Lindsay to her half-built Pink House in a tiny village beside the woods. Life After My Saucepans was published in 2017.

Her life was always complicated and chaotic but Lindsay, who temporarily lost her voice after being shot in the throat during a break-in in book one, continued to see the funny side of life and her readers loved her more with every word and blog she wrote.

This post is in tribute to a dear author who was brutally murdered in December. Lindsay's body was wrapped in bags used for pet food and buried in a shallow grave in the woods beside The Pink House. 

I want to thank Lindsay for the joy she was to work with, the joy she gave to her many readers and the love she gave to so many.

And if I have a takeaway for you, learned from the last eight years with Lindsay it is that a bonkers title is not always a stupid idea. If it is catchy, or ‘sticky’ as Malcolm Gladwell describes in his book The Tipping Point, then that is always a good thing.

Isn’t it time you started writing and preserving your family stories?
My gift of a taster lesson from The Life Story Jar programme is guaranteed to get your 2020 off to a great start.

Click below to get your FREE lesson.

​Fifty shades of green
 
This time of year is perfect for the writer wanting to flex their writerly muscles. Autumn, when the leaves are turning and falling there is so much to ignite the muse within.
 
We all know the benefits of going out and walking in nature; it’s an antidote to the winter blues. For me, though, a walk in the woods at this time of year gives me time to think, to clear my head, to devise poems and lessons and to give my eyes the chance to focus on something that is not a screen within a few inches of my nose.
 
These are the times when I like to play a game with my inner lexicographer. It goes like this…
 
As I wander, I take time to mindfully look, I mean really look, at everything I see. And after a second or two focusing on something I make myself come up with an unclichéd description of it. So, the bark of the silver birch could be like old white paint peeling off in sheets from a damp black wall. The spreading branches of the horse chestnut are not allowed to be like arms reaching to the sky because that’s a cliché, but they could be goddess Shiva’s arms or a hanukkah candelabra. The few dried and shrivelled leaves that cling to the ends of those same branches could be the scorched remains of love letters the tree can no longer bear to read but still clutches with the tips of his fingers.
 
The painter inside you can have a field day trying to find exactly the right colourmatch for each of those leaves. No, you can’t say the beech leaves are like shiny new pennies, that’s been said before. But they could be butterscotch, discs of honeycomb or a cheetah’s iris. In addition, just to make this even harder the word you choose must also convey the emotion you feel. Those autumn leaves are beautiful, right? So while many leaves may remind you exactly of the contents of a newborn’s nappy, you can’t say that. No, you need to choose a word that describes something you love, like brandy snap tuiles. 
 
On a walk in November I found leaves the colour of merlot and a whore’s fingernails. I saw lichen the colour of a 1960s bathroom suite and moss the same shade of green as mushy peas. You are not allowed to use sage, mint and basil to describe leaves because that would be too easy. They are plants too and have leaves of their own. Trying to come up with new words for green is the hardest part of this game.
 
William Wordsworth is known as the poet of nature and he delighted in personifying nature. He writes that leaves ‘kiss’ each other as they tumble to the forest floor and that his famous daffodils ‘dance’. As you walk among the trees and footpaths, notice how some tree roots might be the feet of marching elephants, others the slender feet and ankles of a pair of ballet dancers, high in en pointe. Might the deciduous yew be jealous of the jeweled colours of the beech beside it, for we all know that green is the colour of envy? Trust me, when you start to play this game you’ll soon find there are 50 new shades of green and that nature and your writing comes alive.

​Isn’t nice to hear about a success story about an expat writer who is making money from what she loves to do? 
 
Olga Mecking is a writer friend of mine, based in the Hague, who is creating a storm with her upcoming book with the working title, Niksen, the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing. Just five years ago, after some time spent blogging as European Mama, Olga, who is Polish by nationality, decided to move towards writing and selling articles, seeing success with Huffington Post,The BBC, The Guardian, Playboy and many more. But then, about a year ago, after finding an article in Dutch in a free magazine she picked up at her local organic shop, she learned about something called niksen. With mindfulness being on trend at the moment, together with hygge, tiger parenting and slow-pressed juices, the new writer realised that the Dutch belief in just doing nothing could be bang on trend. First she pitched and sold a ‘trend’ piece to Woolly magazine, being paid about $400 for this. By February she had pitched a ‘service’ piece on the same subject to The New York Times, this time earning $600. After an initial rejection and three rounds of revisions, the piece was published in May and received an incredible 150,000 shares. Olga, it seemed, had discovered the next big thing.
 
A couple of months later she’d been spotted. Both a Dutch publisher, Kosmos Uitgevers and a UK-based agent reached out, urging her to write a book for them. By September she’d made a choice and signed a contract and shortly after foreign rights had been sold to nine other publishers worldwide meaning that her book will be published in 11 languages.
 
“They got a first draft in six weeks,” she explains, “and want my final draft December 1st.” This is moving so quickly but when you write about a topic that is bang on trend you need to act fast. The 50,000 word book should be published in April, less than a year after that piece in the New York Times. 
 
When I asked Olga how this meteoric success made her feel, not to mention the size of an advance that most new authors can only dream of, she said one word, “Stressed.” She puts her incredible success not only to the fact that she hit on the right topic at the right time and received publication in a top notch publication, but that she had spent a few years establishing herself as a paid-for journalist first. “It was smart that I wrote for high-end publications,” she says. “More people were reading me. I got good bylines.” I think Olga is an example of someone who made their own luck.
 
You can read more about Olga and follow her journey at www.olgamecking.com and join her busy Facebook group, The Nikseneers. 

​I don’t know about you but I love a fast fix of inspiration now and again. This is why, for several years, ever since my friend Jacinta gave me my first, I’ve bought myself one of those stand up Page-a-Day calendars for Christmas. I always get the Zen Sayings one, which is a mix of haiku, koans, parables and sayings. A couple of days ago it read: “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness,” which comes from Robert Frost, the nature loving poet best known for The Road Not Taken.
 
I read that extract the other day and it stayed with me as I considered its truth and the way, indeed, that so many poems begin with deep emotion, often sadness. In turn it inspired me to reflect on how art, such as poetry, can make something good out of a bad situation.
 
I’m off to buy myself my next Zen Calendar now because, thanks to Jacinta, it has now become an essential addition to my morning.

Watch out for the soft launch of The Life Story Jar programme – BUY ONE AND GIVE ONE TO A FRIEND
 
I admit that this isn’t ready as soon as I would have liked, but hey, I’m only human.

It’s almost time for my brand new 12-week e-course, The Life Story Jar, to go on sale. Now you can stop procrastinating and start writing your precious stories and preserving them for the future. the programme, divided into modules on themes such as Growing Up, My Travels, My Family and People in My Past will teach and inspire you to leave an important written legacy. 
 
Want to register your interest now to be sure you don’t miss out? Just drop me an email.​

WHEN: Tuesday 10th December and Tuesday 14th January, 09:30-15:30 
WHAT: Definite Articles – learn to write articles based on your overseas experience
WHERE: Jo’s house, Archipel, The Hague
COST: £175
ENQUIRE: Email Jo
 
WHEN: Friday 13th December, 10:00-14:00 
WHAT: Writers’ Circle with Christmas pot luck lunch and Secret Santa
WHERE: Jo’s house, Archipel, The Hague
COST: Free
ENQUIRE: Email Jo
​

​At the end of last month I had the pleasure of hosting new author, Mariam Ottimofiore, for her book tour of the Netherlands. Her book, This Messy Mobile Life, was published earlier this year and, after launches in Bangkok, Dubai and Accra, it was our turn. I invited her to speak at a pot luck lunch at my home directly after one of my free monthly Writers’ Circles. She agreed wholeheartedly and so, almost 20 people crammed into my sitting room to hear her talk about how to move from writer to blogger and why it should be something to think about.
 
“Who thinks they are a writer?” was her opening gambit.
 
About four raised their hands and one of them was me! What?I thought. Fifteen of them had just attended Writers’ Circle. Some of them have been coming along for more than ten years and they stilldon’t think they are a writer.
 
“Who invests in themselves as writers?” was her next question.
 
Three raised hands. Again one was mine.
 
So, they attend Writer’s Circle. They write and share at least two pieces of writing each time and yet they don’t believe they are investing in themselves as writers?  And yet believing you are a writer and investing in yourself as a writer are connected, surely? It stands to reason that if you write occasionally just for the fun of it then that must mean you are a little bit of a writer. A writer is someone who writes. Period. Who said that you need to be published in a newspaper, perhaps, or have a book deal with a publisher to be a real writer? I certainly didn’t. 
 
But then Mariam hit on the nub of the matter, going on to discuss Imposter Syndrome and how not really believing you are any good seems to go with the territory of being an artist –  painter, dancer, actor or writer. I believe that it is this inbuilt humility that makes you sharper. Makes you work harder and recognise that you are only ever really as good as your last piece of work. Mariam, who blogs very successfully at www.andthenwemovedto.com, believes that if we blog we should not judge our writing by the number of likes we get but by the number of shares and the comments we elicit. In other words it’s about the engagement we have with our readers.
 
A writer is someone is writes but they are never going to know if they are any good unless someone else reads it or listens to it and gives feedback. Those comments and shares are feedback. They are fuel for the writer. And, for many of us, receiving them goes some way towards believing we deserve to call ourselves writers. Attending a Writers’ Circle can tick this box too. For, if it is any good, the meetings should foster live engagement, sharing and feedback.
 
Surely then, attending a writing club or circle is a way of investing in yourself as a writer, isn’t it? Even if you only write for a few minutes each time. You see, even if you only move your pen across a page for ten minutes those ten minutes are an investment that will move you closer to that elusive self-belief.
 
When Mariam asked those questions I think the audience believed that ‘being a writer’ meant more than what they do already. I disagree. I think they believed that ‘investing in yourself’ meant more than giving yourself a few minutes alone with a pen and paper. I disagree. Sure, it can also mean that you pay to attend courses or attend writing retreats. But doesn’t buying a book on writing count? Doesn’t appreciating the writing craft in the novel you are reading count? Doesn’t making up a poem about the way the rain runs down the windowpane count? Doesn’t attending an author reading count? 
 
Earlier that morning several of the attendees burst into spontaneous tears, moved by their own writing or by another’s or, in at least one case, moved from the joy of words written and shared. Wasn’t that, then, investment? Weren’t those attendees who took two or three hours from their busy schedules that day investing in themselves and thus that makes them writers… just a little bit?
 
So, let me ask those questions again and add one more of my own:
 
“Are you a writer?”
 
“Do you invest in yourself as a writer?”
 
“What are you going to do this month to invest in yourself as a writer?”

Have you ever subscribed to a writing magazine? I have. Over the years I have taken Writing Magazine,The Writer,Mslexia, Granta and Poetry Magazine. I have found them not only to be valuable sources of advice but also of interviews with amateur and professional published writers. Importantly for me, when I was starting out, it was the source of new markets and competitions that was the main reason I took out subscriptions. For any writer there is nothing so compelling as a focus, a deadline and a word count to get the creative juices flowing. I know that, today, blogs are a great source of inspiration and content but, for me, there is nothing like the print version of a publication. As for the classifieds sections, they are always worth a read. 

I don’t know about you, but I do love a memoir. They are not the easiest genre to write because even though you are writing about real life you still need to have a plot and characters. You need to set scenes and evoke atmospheres that will be so familiar to you that it is hard to see them with fresh enough eyes to recreate them effectively for your readers. And, as for dialogue, it is phenomenally hard to remember what people said verbatim and how they said it and then write it down so it sounds natural. So, when I noticed that Tracey Thorn and her partner, Ben Watt, the two halves of one of my favourite bands, Everything But the Girl, had written memoirs, I decided to read both of them back to back and compare. Okay, so it’s not very fair of me to do that, but then I did know they both studied English at Hull university. I know this because they were contemporaries of mine and I saw them now and again on campus. I also know I love their songs and am particularly drawn to Tracey’s lyrics. They had also both gone on to write more than one memoir, so if the publishers liked their work their readers must have done so too. I was hopeful. 
 
I read Ben’s first. Romany and Tom. His parents. I bought it without reading the blurb and was slightly taken aback to realise this was a book about the last few weary years of his parents’, Romany and Tom's, lives. They were old, feeble and sick, so it’s hardly an attractive topic, but this book gives a snapshot of a life stage we will all go through once as our parents age and again as we age ourselves. It resonated big time. Tracey and the couple's three children feature as shadowy characters as does Ben’s own career but this is a book about his parents, his half-gypsy journalist mother and his now washed-up big band leader father, and their demise. Despite the maudlin topic, this is a great example of a book that stands squarely on its voice, for Ben is a terrific writer with a wonderful way with words. I could not put it down.
 
Tracey’s was next and frankly, despite the fact that she has an MA in English and is the pair’s lyricist, her memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen, is totally different. It is solely about her music career – and what a career it has been.  I’m no musician and so it didn’t resonate quite like Ben’s. That Tracey has a plot is not in dispute and we are compelled to read on to find out what happened between then and now and how they reached such meteoric heights when Tracey had little confidence in her ability. I guess she can't hear what we hear. That she can write is a given, but she handles narrative very differently from Ben, returning to her diaries, written at a time when she was less polished but no less honest. As she matures, so does the book and her writing comes into its own. I’m left impressed at how she handled times when memory's vague knowing that it had to be there; the fan reader really does want to know about the days before the band and how this quirky punk from Hatfield rose above other wannabes.
 
To me, Tracey and Ben come as a pair and have always come as a pair. They have lived and worked together since they were 19. They ‘walk the same line’ as Tracey sang in We Walk The Same Line in 1994. While they often tell the same story, having both lived it, they do so very differently. Their voices are different. They alight on different aspects of the same story and they tell it their way.
 
So, when you consider how you might tackle writing your own memoir, I invite you to consider how you might choose to tell it – like Ben, who expands a short space of time into his 350 page memoir, or Tracey, who packs over 25 years into hers.

Three weeks ago Ian and I took our summer holiday. We joined dear friends for a week sailing in Croatia.  It was our second time there, only a year earlier, just as we’d landed at Dubrovnik airport my phone rang. It was Joshua telling me the terrible news that my father had passed away in his sleep. Of course I would fly straight back to England to be with my mother but, as it took a while to get a flight, I spent two nights on board first. 
   
My memory is sketchy of that time. All I can remember is the pervasive scent of rosemary and collapsing in floods of tears several times a day. According to Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “rosemary’s for remembrance” and the phrase ran in a loop each time I crossed its path.
     
​This year I planned to actually notice Croatia and engage with the experience and so I did. I relaxed into the gentle sway of the boat and watched the sky endlessly as it moved from a buttery sunrise to sunsets streaked with indigo and pink. I tasted every bite of the fresh local seafood and became entranced by the surface of the sea in each of the bays we chose for our berth. I like to focus on the things I hear and see and feel and smell and try to describe what they are like so someone else can imagine it too. Sometimes I use similes, sometimes I just find the right words, so maybe the sea was transparent aquamarine, rippled like fish skin or flat, shiny and thick as an oil slick. I went for a morning swim and focused hard on each of the sounds I could hear, singling them out one by one and naming them: the put put of an outboard motor, the clap of flip flops walking on tarmac, birdsong like a sticky spoke in a bicycle wheel, the squeal and splosh as a young boy leapt from the deck. I was engaged. I was mindful and my mind ran tickertape subtitles as I silently put words to it all. Oh yes, we had a marvellous time. I laughed and I sang and I did not cry. But all the time, at the back of mind, was the thought that I needed to find something inspiring to write about for you this month. And everywhere I turned was that incredible smell of rosemary and whenever it filled my nostrils I was jerked back in time to the previous summer and for a few moments inspiration fled. 
 
It was the last day and we had to be off the boat by 9 am. Bags crowded the deck as we slowly denuded the cabins of all our belongings and the last job was to take the empty bottles and rubbish out to the bins. The task fell to me and the bags bumped against my bare legs as I walked first the gangplank, then the bouncing jetty to the shore. Past the café, the showers and the shop and into the carpark I walked, eventually finding the bins buried halfway down the carpark. There was a huge half-empty silver skip and a range of coloured containers to choose from. But then I heard voices. Three pairs of hands reached through the wire mesh of the fence. I looked up and the whiskery faces of three old women with stringy grey hair called to me. “Here! Here!” they called and their fingers beckoned. They wanted my bags of rubbish. How ridiculous, I thought and moved to look at the signs telling me where to put my plastic, paper and bottles. I pulled the first plastic bottle from my bag and a shriek went up from the one of the fence ladies while the hands waved madly. They wanted my empty bottles! In the end it transpired that they wanted all my recyclable materials and so I gladly passed them through the fence for them to stuff into large sacks as they hollered for the attention of the next customers.
 
As I walked back to the jetty it came to me. In writing, very often, our stories are found not in the obvious places, not in the bright and shiny or blissful moments, but down amongst the grit and the dirt and the sorrow. 
 
I often tell my students that their best writing will be the parts of their text that other people remember the next day. I’ll wager that the parts of this story that will stay with you are not my eulogies and my glossy memories of water and sunsets but of my lingering grief and the whiskery rubbish collectors. ​

I’ve been busy since May creating and trialling a brand new 12-week programme that helps people to start creating and writing their life stories one piece at a time.  I call it the Life Story Jar programme and the first wave is now complete so I’m moving towards a launch late this year. Don’t let your stories and memories die with you. My programme, divided into modules on various themes such as childhood and friendship, teaches you how to leave an important written legacy. 
 
Want to register your interest now to be sure you don’t miss out? Just drop me an email.

WHEN: Friday 25th October, 10:00-12:30 
WHAT: Writers’ Circle
WHERE: Jo’s house, Archipel, The Hague
COST: Free
ENQUIRE: Email Jo

March in Malaysia

WHEN: 16-19 March 2020 on Penang Island and at Tiger Rock, Pangkor Island, Malaysia. 4pm 16 March, Penang – 4pm 19 March, Penang.
WHAT: Immerse yourself in the fascinating heritage of UNESCO World Heritage Site’s George Town for one night and then spend two nights in the exclusive jungle island retreat of Tiger Rock. Perfectly timed to follow the Families in Global Transition conference in Bangkok, 13-15 March.
COST: £750 includes all food, transport and accommodation. Want to go straight to the ferry to Tiger Rock on 17th? Pay £600.
ENQUIRE: Email Jo

April in Holland
​
WHEN: 17-19 April, The Hague, Netherlands. 3pm-7pm 17 April, 9.30am-7pm 18 April, 10am-7pm 19 April.
WHAT: Come be inspired by art and flowers in the delightful city, seat of the Dutch parliament. Visit the stunning Keukenhof Gardens when the bulbs are at their peak and the Mauritshuis, home of The Girl With a Pearl Earring. You will also have a few hours on Sunday 19th to explore at your own pace.
COST: £390 includes excursions, cocktails and canapés. Does not include accommodation or meals.
ENQUIRE: Email Jo

​I’ve just emerged from the cinema, my cheeks and Ian’s damp from tears. At one point most of the audience could be heard choking back sobs, squeaking gently in their attempt to stay quiet. The film was Ramen Shop. It was in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, English and Singlish (that’s what they call the way Singaporeans speak English – and yes, the Singaporeans call it that too) and told the story of a Japanese-Singapore Chinese Cross-Cultural young man called Masato who, at the start, was helping out in his widowed father’s ramen shop in Japan. It was not long before we understood the reason his very talented father continued to make the same broth and the same soup every day was because it was his way of keeping the memory of his wife, Mei Lan, alive. Masato travels to Singapore, where he was born and where he lived for the first ten years of his life, in search of the memory of his mother who had passed away not long after the family moved to Japan. As he moved from one unpretentious street-side family-run soup joint to another he found the tastes of his childhood wherein lay the essence of his beloved mother. Food had led him home. His uncle taught him how to make bak kut teh, the pork rib soup of his childhood, and the act of creating it was infused with intense spices and emotions. The more he learned, the more he cooked, the more his heart was infused with love and loss. There were moments in the film when no words were spoken but we could see in the way Masato held his chopsticks or gazed into his spoon that his heart was both full and breaking at the same time. As his eyes locked onto his grandmother’s and tears rolled down his face, they rolled down ours too. It was some of the most intense cinema I have ever seen.
 
I shan’t spoil the film and urge you to see it for yourself but there are two reasons why I feel so compelled to share this with you. Mei Lan had kept a journal, written to her son for the first years of his life in her native Mandarin, which was unfamiliar to her son. In it she had shared her deepest most private feelings, pressed petals from Japanese cherry blossom, sketches and, importantly, recipes. Recipes that were filled with culture, tradition, family values, heritage and nutrition. We watched enthralled as Miki, a Singapore-based Japanese food blogger who Masato had befriended online, turned the pages of the journal and translated it for him. Now Masato could connect with his mother again. Masato’s mother had preserved precious truths in those pages. She wrote about her life so that her son could find the places where she had lived, worked and had fun and could walk in her shoes. He could learn about what mattered to her, deep inside. Though his mother had passed away when he was only ten, he was at last able to keep his relationship with her alive. Mei Lan knew the value of keeping her stories and her truth, sacred not secret. This is why I created my Life Story Jar programme, so that people like Masato can get to meet beloved relatives who have passed, and through those pages, written with such love and feeling, they can stay connected.
 
Food transcends cultures and generation. At its core it is filled with nutrition and culture but, when made with love, that love is a powerful thing. I urge you to write to your own families and as you do so relive the intense emotions that were present at the time of your defining moments and be sure to include the recipes that matter.
 
Ian and I left the cinema that day and made a beeline for an Asian supermarket so we could buy soup noodles, Chinese cabbage and pork ribs. The broth bubbled on the stove for five hours just as it had for Masato and his father.
 
It was such an inspiring film. Go and see it if you can and please make sure you start writing a diary so that your family can come to know who you really are.

​Getting a book published can be an expensive process. Having helped 200 new authors to write, edit, design and publish their books over the last 17 years I know what it can cost. Many authors decide to go for crowdfunding in order to raise the cash required. So, last month I was delighted to hear about a company called Unbound. As publishers they consider a book for publication and then, if they like it, they help you to crowdfund to pay for it. As a result, they have raised over £7 million to fund 470 projects since they began. They are British and based in London. It’s a cool idea, right?

​While we’re on the subject of soup, did you know I’d written a novel called Sunshine Soup? Yeah, right, marketing isn’t my strong suit. It had been my lifelong dream to write and publish a novel and so in 2011 I did just that and it was easily the hardest thing I have ever written. It was very loosely based on some of my experiences in Dubai and tells the story of mum Maya, in her 40’s, married to Rich, a pilot and expat for the first time.  Blind-sided by a stamp in her passport that said she was not able to work Maya had to be creative to come up with something that would give her life meaning. It’s a parable of sorts and includes some of the stuff I put in my book, A Career in Your Suitcase.

I’ve been busy since May creating and trialling a brand new 12-week programme that helps people to start creating and writing their life stories one piece at a time. I call it the Life Story Jar programme and the first wave is now complete so I’m moving towards a launch later this year. Don’t let your stories and memories die with you. My programme, divided into modules on various themes such as childhood and friendship, teaches you how to leave an important written legacy. More news to follow in the next Monthly Inspirer. Want to register your interest now to be sure you don’t miss out? Just drop me an email at jo@joparfitt.com.

​September is all about Mariam Ottimofiore… She has a punishing schedule of talks taking place in The Hague from 24th – 27th September. You can see the full list here, but I am happy to host the one below.

​When: Friday 27th September, 10:00-12:30
​Where: Jo's house, Archipel, The Hague
​Cost: Free including lunch
​Book: Email at jo@joparfitt.com

​When: Friday 27th September, 12:30-14:00
Where: Jo's house, Archipel, The Hague
Cost: Free
Book: Email Jo at ​ jo@joparfitt.com

​Earlier this year, after 12 months’ mentoring from me, Jack and I  were delighted to publish This Messy Mobile Life by Mariam Ottimofiore. We are very lucky that she is visiting The Hague in late September and can come to talk to us about her move from blogger to writer to author.

When: 16th - 19th March, 2020
What: Immerse yourself in the fascinating heritage of UNESCO World Heritage Site’s George Town for one night and then spend two nights in the exclusive jungle island retreat of Tiger Rock. Perfectly timed to follow the Families in Global Transition conference in Bangkok, 13-15 March
Cost: £750 includes accommodation and all food. ​Want to go straight to Tiger Rock on 17th? Pay £600
​Enquire: ​Email at jo@joparfitt.com

When:  17th - 19th April, 2020, The Hague
What: Come be inspired by art and flowers in the delightful city, seat of the Dutch parliament. Visit the stunning Keukenhof Gardens when the bulbs are at their peak and the Mauritshuis, home of The Girl With a Pearl Earring. You will also have a few hours on Sunday 19th to explore at your own pace
Cost: £390 includes excursions, cocktails and canapés. Does not include accommodation or meals
​Enquire: Email at jo@joparfitt.com

When: 9th - 16th May, 2020 - 7 nights
What: Write Life Stories fully inclusive residential retreat hosted by Bill and Lois Breckon. This will be my fifth time at the mill. Come and learn how to write about your life in an exquisite setting. Includes 30 hours of lessons
Cost: Approx £1,800, depending on your choice of room
​Enquire: More details and how to book on watermill.net

• I wrote an inspiring column about writing, running a home-based business or living abroad. That’s The Inspiring Bit.
• I added some connections to some cool websites, authors, courses, conferences or companies I thought would be useful to you. That’s The Connecting Bit.
• I told you the dates of any upcoming speaking or teaching engagements. That’s The Parting Piece. 

​Well, I am delighted to announce that The Monthly Inspirer is BACK and this time it is all about writing.
 
That’s it. That’s all it is. Past subscribers told me they loved it and it was the one email newsletter they would save and read with a cup of coffee. They bemoaned its demise. In my infinite wisdom I decided to stop producing it and move over to blogging. It didn’t work. I went from 3,000 subscribers to an embarrassingly small number overnight.
 
If you want a taste of what was in a decade of Inspirers, then feel free to download a free PDF you can read on your iPad or Kindle Fire called The Inspirer Collection.*

We were experiencing a European heatwave when I wrote this…
 
It is currently 33 degrees inside my office and that’s with two fans on and the blinds drawn. I’m stifled – but my creative inspiration is certainly not on a slowdown. As it was only (only!) 28 degrees at 8 am I decided to head for a walk in the woods and deliberately left my phone behind.
 
A walk in the woods is what I do whenever I need to mull something over and for several months now I have had a massive project to mull over. It’s called the Life Story Jar and is the largest, most multi-faceted, scariest project I have ever created and is taking over my life. It’s a bit of a foray into a new area while putting all the things I have learned and taught over the years into a programme I consider to be my legacy. But that’s for another time. For now, suffice it to say that my head is all over the place.
 
So, I headed off in the shade of my wide-brimmed hat, up Bankastraat towards the Bosjes, which means ‘woods’. Out there in the cool of a leafy pathway it came to me. My mind was so full of ideas that it felt soupy, thick and hot. But now and again a rather good idea would emerge from the gloop and I’d take notice. I’d try my best to look at it in isolation and examine it long enough for it to not have disappeared back into the soup by the time I got home.  How I wished my mind were as transparent and uncluttered as a consommé; a rich, tasty, nutritious bone broth that, like my thinking, was crystal clear. The perfect consommé were I to ever achieve such a state of mind would have one single exquisitely formed idea floating in the centre, like a truffle raviolo or a soft quail’s egg. But no, my mind was a permanent minestrone and I realised that I had to accept and embrace it for what it was – a muddle, but a good muddle in which there really were some good ideas.
 
As I walked more ideas flew in, some stayed awhile, some disappeared but still the soup metaphor remained. Like the best minestrone soup, made with a perfectly chopped mirepoix of vegetables that swim in a delicious, see-through broth. And like a minestrone, some ideas float while others sink. All have the potential to be great someday, but I don’t know about you, the ones that float on the top get taken first. Just as this post today persisted for the length of my wander and was still floating on the surface by the time I’d switched on the fans and sat down at my desk.