S2E18: Author Lindsay Bartels on impossible decisions, starting with a big question and holding yourself lightly

**Season 2: The Home Season** *The second season of Creative Momentum with Meg, The Home Season, features interviews with Australian writers and artists where I explore how and why people do their creative work.* **Episode 18: Lindsay Bartels, Author** Lindsay Bartels is an American writer living on Sydney’s Northern Beaches whose debut memoir *Imogen in Waiting: A Memoir of Modern Reproduction* was published by Third Rail Press in June 2026. The book centres on one of the most ethically complex decisions a parent could face: Lindsay was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 20s and found she carried the BRCA1 genetic mutation. When she and her husband underwent IVF, they were left with three viable embryos, one of them a female carrying the same gene. The memoir, addressed directly to that embryo, is a meditation on agency, surrender, what makes a life worth living, and how we navigate the unknown. Small, precise and told in vignettes, it is a book that earns every word. This is a conversation about how Lindsay wrote it, what she learned about process along the way, and what she is working out now as she moves into fiction. In this conversation, we talk about: How Lindsay wrote her memoir almost entirely by hand, across four 100-page notebooks, with a pragmatic page-count schedule that kept her moving forward The advice from writing teacher Mary Adkins that changed everything: start with a big, thorny ethical question and follow it through, rather than trying to write ‘the whole story’ How the three-act structure gave her memoir a loose but usable shape, and why a story you already know is a very different thing to write than one you are making up Why she now protects her early fiction from feedback, and why she sets aside workshop responses rather than acting on them immediately The difference between the encouragement you need in the early stages and the critique you need later, and how to ask for exactly what you want from a reader What refuels her creative life: living more, following curiosity into uncomfortable places, and doing things because she herself is excited to try them Why home, for Lindsay, is where the books are, even when they are the wrong books in the wrong country Whether you are sitting with a story that feels too personal, too complicated or too big to write, or trying to work out how to protect a fragile early draft from well-meaning feedback, this episode will give you both the framework and the permission to keep going. Lindsay is warm, thoughtful and disarmingly honest about what she still does not know. **Connect with Lindsay** \- Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lindsaybartels_ \- Website https://www.lindsay-bartels.com/ \- Book: Imogen in Waiting https://www.thirdrailpress.org/books/imogen-in-waiting \- Events http://lindsay-bartels.com/events \- Substack publication: lettersfromlindsay.substack.com **Other things mentioned in the conversation** *-* Here After by Amy Lin https://www.amydawnlin.com/hereafter \- The First Draft Club podcast **Read the full interview** https://megdunley.com/2026/07/01/interviews-with-creatives-author-lindsay-bartels/ Find all Creative Momentum with Meg show notes **and interviews:** https://megdunley.substack.com/s/creative-momentum-with-meg-dunley *A special thanks to Yvonne Morton for the music accompanying this episode. You can find Yvonne on* Bandcamp *(*https://yvonnemorton.bandcamp.com/*) and* Instagram*.(*https://www.instagram.com/yvonne.morton/*)* Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Musings with Meg at megdunley.substack.com/subscribe