NICOLA Sturgeon has provided an update on her new memoir as she predicted that “one or two people” might hate it.
Speaking to an audience in Edinburgh, the former first minister said she had now finished a first draft of the book after it proved much harder to write than she expected.
However, she said she ended up with almost double the number of words she was meant to produce for her publisher.
She also joked that there was “lots” of her first draft that would have to be removed for legal reasons, saying the process “is going to be quite tricky”.
Speaking at an in-conversation event at Portobello Town Hall with the poets Michael Pedersen and Hollie McNish, Sturgeon (below) said she felt a “lot cooler” since standing down as first minister.
Publisher Pan Macmillan announced it snapped up the rights to Sturgeon’s memoir last August with the book due for publication in 2025.
It is yet to be given a title although is described as a “deeply personal and revealing memoir from one of Britain’s most significant political leaders of recent times”.
Speaking at the event in Portobello Town Hall, Sturgeon said: “I hate the term memoir. It sounds a bit grandiose for my liking. I suppose it’s the story of my life in politics.
“It’s been very therapeutic. Some people will love it, there’s one or two people who will hate it. I’m naming no names, but you can work it out for yourself.
“I love books, I love reading. Writers have always been my rock stars. I love interviewing them at festivals.”
Sturgeon added that writing her own book has given her “even more respect for writers” and that although she didn’t expect things to be simple, “it’s been a lot harder than I thought it would be”.
“The first draft is done now, although it’s almost double the length that the book needs to be,” she said.
“There’s a bit about my younger life, which I think I’ve come to the conclusion wasn’t that interesting, so maybe we’ll chop that bit out.
“I used to write a speech and sit with advisers who would say ‘I think you should take that bit out’.
“I’d fight tooth and nail, then get to the point where I’d realise they were right. I think it’ll eb like that with the book as well.”
Publicity material for Sturgeon’s book states that it will “detail her interactions with a range of notable figures” and give the inside story on “the most eventful and tumultuous era in modern Scottish and British politics”.
“I’m very aware there’s lots of things that have happened in my time in politics that I think are really interesting.
“But I’m probably the only person on the planet that thinks that. These kind of things are going to have to be wrestled out of it.”
