Overexposed?

When Jude Rogers asked Mark Lanegan in an interview for the Guardian why he had written such a brutally honest warts-'n'-all memoir (Sing Backwards And Weep), he responded: "Because it means I won't have to answer any questions any more. If anyone wants to know what this experience was like ... it's all there."

But of course what Lanegan hadn't bargained on is that publishing the book wouldn't lay things to rest - quite the opposite, in fact, at least initially. He ended up learning the same painful lesson that Viv Albertine did when she wrote Clothes Clothes Clothes. Music Music Music. Boys Boys Boys: that he would be repeatedly expected to talk about and relive trauma for promotional purposes.

No doubt Rogers herself now knows how it feels, too, having published The Sound Of Being Human, her own very personal book about music, memory and emotion.

All of which made this article, by Rogers' Guardian colleague Terri White, an arresting read. She too has found the experience of publishing a candid memoir to be traumatising rather than cathartic: feeling terrified at the prospect of putting it out into the world, beyond her control; "excavating memories that I buried decades ago"; subsequently finding herself the subject of cruel observations and criticisms from strangers online.

White calls for greater protection and guidance for the writers of such memoirs - but concludes her cautionary tale by urging anyone contemplating exposing themselves in print to first "conduct a thorough, robust self-examination": "Can you write it? Right now? Feeling pain is to be expected, destroying yourself in the process isn't. If it's a no, it's as brave, perhaps even more so, not to write."