#105: Creativity Beyond Constraints: Penny Wincer on Navigating Unlevel Playing Fields

In this episode I speak to Penny Wincer, a book coach and author, about creativity, care, and what work means when life is complex. Penny shares her path from a childhood around film sets to studying a multidisciplinary arts degree, assisting fashion photographers in London and New York, and ultimately becoming an interiors photographer. She explains how writing returned when she ringfenced Fridays for a City Lit course after divorce and as a single parent, and how her experiences as a young carer for her unwell mother connected with parenting her autistic son with a learning disability, leading to her first book, Tender, on care, unpaid labour, and identity. We discuss how her proposal secured multiple publishing offers despite a small profile, and how the pandemic and escalating care needs forced her to end her photography career and rebuild her working life from home. Penny talks about employing nannies, the limits of paid support, the emotional labour of constant regulation, work as respite, and how her lived experience reshaped her views on privilege, fairness, disability, and intersectionality. She describes training with Author Accelerator to become a non-fiction book proposal coach, building a business and audience through a newsletter and online visibility, and challenging myths about perfect writing conditions and the claim that everyone has a book in them. Penny also shares practical guidance for aspiring nonfiction authors - starting with the ‘why’, understanding the market, and defining a unique angle and voice.

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The women Penny recommended were Caro Giles and Suzy Reading (scroll back to episode 2 to hear her story!)