When my memoir came out, I got a brutal shock. Vulnerable writers need protection

‘If you’re writing a memoir, the moment of panic at your own specific revelations will come.’ Photograph: izusek/Getty Images/iStockphoto

I called her Terri The World Gets. She was the outward-facing me, the woman I’d spent decades curating. And Terri The World Gets was about to be rocketed into space, never to return.

September 2019, a Friday afternoon, and the Bookseller announced that I’d written a memoir, Coming Undone, to be published by Canongate the following summer. A memoir, the press release explained, about (deep breath): poverty, self-harm, physical abuse, sexual abuse, anxiety, depression, dissociation, suicidal ideation, alcohol and drug abuse, and being sectioned in a New York psychiatric ward.