The Page & Podium Podcast with Dr. Amanda Nell Edgar
Jul 14, 2026 · 26 min · 12 segments
When your memoir feels stuck, the advice you’ll often hear is to push through. Sit down, force the words, meet the deadline, keep going no matter what. But for memoir writers, that advice can make the…
Amanda Nell EdgarHostThis topic has been on my docket for a while, and if you are somebody that is a member of The Memoir Method, if you have worked with me, you will not be surprised to hear me talking about this issue in today's podcast episode.
One of the things that was really, really common to my own writing process, but also a lot of the people that I was around when I was an academic, was that there was very much a sense that you should be pushing yourself all the time, that you were defending your writing time.
And part of that defense was that when your writing time came, you were butt in seat and you were moving those fingers as fast as you could and you better be productive, right? I know that that is not exclusive to academia.
I am very, very aware that actually every high achieving field, every field that takes a lot of diligence and dedication to get to a high up level always is going to come with some temptation to push ourselves.
to be productive at all costs and one thing that really changed for me in a pretty noticeable way not only to my clients but to my friends and family as well was that the longer i was doing this work of working with first-time authors working with memoirists running page and podium press the more clear it became to me this idea of pushing through is antithetical to good work now Let me break that down because I suspect there will be at least some resistance to that idea.
But I promise this is grounded in the data of all the people I have ever worked with, dozens of people, maybe hundreds at this point.
Now, the way I want to break this down is by giving you one of these binaries that we really base everything at Page and Podium on, keeping them in balance.
This topic has been on my docket for a while, and if you are somebody that is a member of The Memoir Method, if you have worked with me, you will not be surprised to hear me talking about this issue in today's podcast episode.
One of the things that was really, really common to my own writing process, but also a lot of the people that I was around when I was an academic, was that there was very much a sense that you should be pushing yourself all the time, that you were defending your writing time.
And part of that defense was that when your writing time came, you were butt in seat and you were moving those fingers as fast as you could and you better be productive, right? I know that that is not exclusive to academia.
I am very, very aware that actually every high achieving field, every field that takes a lot of diligence and dedication to get to a high up level always is going to come with some temptation to push ourselves.
to be productive at all costs and one thing that really changed for me in a pretty noticeable way not only to my clients but to my friends and family as well was that the longer i was doing this work of working with first-time authors working with memoirists running page and podium press the more clear it became to me this idea of pushing through is antithetical to good work now Let me break that down because I suspect there will be at least some resistance to that idea.
But I promise this is grounded in the data of all the people I have ever worked with, dozens of people, maybe hundreds at this point.
Now, the way I want to break this down is by giving you one of these binaries that we really base everything at Page and Podium on, keeping them in balance.
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