What do you do?

When you meet someone new, they always ask what you do. This makes things very awkward when you retire. When I first left work, I used to say that I worked in the evaluation field, but as time goes on, I’m less likely to say that. For a start, evaluation doesn’t sound terribly interesting, even though it’s fascinating (really truly it is), but I feel as though I can’t reasonably claim to be an evaluator when I no longer show much interest in the field and haven’t even bothered renewing my membership to the Australasian Evaluation Society.

I’m still reluctant to say that I’m retired, mainly because “being retired” isn’t actually a job and it also sounds very boring. Now before all you retired folks start telling me how busy and active you are, (I know, you’ve never been this busy in your life before, how did you ever have time to go to work?), I’m talking here about perceptions and not real-life.

Despite being happily retired, I dislike not having a role or job title. Even though most people say they hate being labelled, it’s a very easy way to establish a conversation without having to find out if you both enjoy reading or cooking. (Although frankly, if you don’t like either of these, we are unlikely to be friends).

I’ve recently started calling myself a writer, but it has its own pitfalls. I don’t know why it took me so long, given that I’ve been writing for years. I’ve written blog posts, reports, presentations, learner guides and web copy. Many years ago, I wrote a very short children’s book, which was published as a school reader, much to my joy and amazement. I even had a personal essay published in the national newspaper, before I knew how hard it was to get published in a newspaper. I sent my piece, “A feminist goes to weight-watchers” off to the Sydney Morning Herald one day, and it magically appeared in a first-person column they ran in the Tuesday edition. No money changed hands, but I was thrilled to bits.

I went looking for the clipping the other day and couldn’t find it in any of my numerous ‘writing folders’, but I managed to find a copy in a digital newspaper archive, so I downloaded it and filed it away safely in case anyone ever wants to read it. Maybe I should add a page on this blog and call it published writing. It would be a very short page…

So, although I’m comfortable calling myself a writer, I dread the next question which is, “what do you write?” I generally mumble something about being a blogger, or writing stories for children, but I usually avoid saying that I write creative non-fiction because no-one ever knows what that is. I would love to say that I write personal essays, but I would need to have published my work somewhere this century. So far, I’m not doing very well in that department.

It’s not that I’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful with my submissions, I just haven’t been brave enough to submit my work anywhere apart from Brevity magazine, and it’s very, very hard to get published there.

Now that I’m officially retired, I have plenty of time to write and I’ve started a few essays, but none of them are really polished enough to send anywhere. When you stop submitting your work, your confidence drains away, and you become less and less likely to send anything out. 

Other writers say that you need to keep trying, so I guess that’s what I’ll do. In the meantime, I’ll just keep practising here because every bit of writing helps you hone your skills and you know what they say about practice.

Writing your life

Hello lovely people. How are you?

I’ve been off doing a creative non-fiction writing course and as a result have not been posting here as often as I should. (Although who’s to say how often that should be?) And when I say I’ve been OFF doing a course, I mean that I was doing this from my home, so I really don’t have any excuse for not writing on my blog as well.

It’s true that I was a little bit distracted by keeping on top of the daily writing prompts and submitting my assignments, but the course finished about three weeks ago and I still haven’t managed to post anything here. To be honest, I think there’s more going on than just not having the time.

Last time I did a writing course with Creative Nonfiction Org (a great organisation by the way) I felt a bit flat when after it finished and disinclined to write anything new. When I wrote about this, a wise friend said that you should be careful of taking too many classes because you can get stuck thinking of yourself as an amateur. This comment has always stayed with me, so when I signed up for the recent course it was with half an eye to learning how a memoir writing course might be structured in case I was ever brave enough to teach my own class. I don’t mean I was going to plagiarise the course content, I just wanted to see how they approached the whole topic of writing about your life. It’s a tricky and delicate thing to teach.

So let me say that I came away very humbled by the skill of the facilitator, but also by the talent that the other students demonstrated. I’m not trying to put myself down when I say that I realised that I have a lot to learn. By comparison my pieces were unpolished all over the place. I hopped around from one topic to the other trying to piece together all the memories and the feelings that went with those memories. I wrote about things that I’ve never dared write about before and although it was thrilling, it was also daunting. It was like learning to speak and I didn’t have the words, let alone any coherent thoughts.

I wrote about joyous and painful experiences, albeit in my own disjointed way and then wondered what on earth I would do with all this writing?

The course facilitator said that I could rework the pieces so that they were publishable, but I doubt that I will ever be brave enough to do this, unless it’s under an assumed name. I’m also worried that my family will read what I’ve written and will be shocked or think that I am wrong in my interpretation of events. I raised with another memoir teacher that I really admire and she said “you have a right to tell your own story the way you remember it”. I think this is right. She also said to password protect your computer! I don’t think I’ll go this far because I find it tiresome to unlock my computer every time I sit down to write, but I do think I might get a password protected folder so that I can keep writing from the heart.

My other realisation is that writing isn’t about publication, it’s about getting all those thoughts and feelings out of your head and down on to paper so that you can make sense of them. So that’s what I’m planning to do.

Thank you for reading my blog and feel free to comment, agree or disagree. I’d love to know what you think.

Cheers and keep well!

Are you my target audience?

This week I watched a webinar presented by Ann Handley, author of Everybody Writes, where she explained the power of writing to one person about one thing. I know this is good advice, but I don’t know who that person is, and I don’t know what issues they are struggling with.

All the evidence points to the fact that if I did know who my target audience was and what it was that they wanted or needed, I would be wildly successful.

Oh, and I would need to fulfil their needs really well and learn how to market myself and stop all the negative self-talk that is (apparently) ruining my chances of success. I’d need to “get out of my own way”, believe in myself and relentlessly pursue my one single goal.

Easy!

What’s stopping me, I hear you cry?

Well in the first place, I think perhaps I’m a selfish writer. I want to write about things that interest me in the hope that there’s someone out there who is interested in the same things. I figure it’s a big wide world out there and there must be some people somewhere who have similar ideas (or wildly different ideas, that would be ok too). Sometimes I like to write about things I’m unsure about or worried about in the hope that someone will feel the same and will therefore feel heard.

But oh, I’d love some more readers, I’d love to be useful and I’d love to be part of a little community where I could talk to interesting people about interesting things.

Yesterday some friends came over for afternoon tea and we spent a couple of hours discussing how we had survived Covid19 thus far. It’s such a boring topic, I can’t stand talking about it. Then we moved on to sport and politics. Still boring.

People often remark that I’m very quiet in social situations, but I’m mostly bored to death with the conversation. I prefer to talk about books and ideas.

For me, targeting my audience is really hard. You can be any age, any colour, race of gender. You can live anywhere in the world and do any kind of work. People I get along with are often people who ask a lot of questions, are open to ideas and care about other people. That’s a pretty big group of people I reckon.

Often when I’m writing to my ideal reader I’m writing to one of my friends (or my sister who is both a relative and a friend) and I think that works for me, but I’d love to know who you are and if there are things I could be writing about.

Let’s chat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing better content

Hello lovely friends

I hope you are all coping in these strange times.

I have four days left at work before I go on leave for 6 months. Someone asked me if it was bad timing, but I feel like it’s a good time to be taking a break. It’s hard to concentrate on work and I have lots of projects that need some focussed attention.

My plans for the next six months includes:

1. Doing more writing.
2. Doing more exercise (walking every day and doing my back exercises every morning).
3. Doing more cooking (this will depend on how the exercise plan pans out).
4. Doing some minor renovations round the house (mainly painting things).
5. Weeding the madly overgrown garden and getting ready for some spring planting.
6. Sorting out lots of paper work.
7. Revamping my blog and making a decision about whether to combine this blog with my other blog. (Any thoughts on this would be gratefully received).
8. Learning some new skills. (I love learning but I’ve got a low boredom threshold so the course needs to move along quickly.)
9. Reading all the books in my TBR (to be read) pile.
10. In particular, reading the writing books that I’ve been accumulating for about 20 years.

Over the past week I’ve seen a plethora of free courses being offered so I’ve been madly signing up for things that interest me. These are mainly around content marketing and blogging. I’m getting heaps of emails every day reminding me to watch videos and do the associated course-work.

Typically, I’m not really doing a very good job of doing the actual work although yesterday I watched quite an interesting webinar on content writing that was offered by Copyblogger. Most of the content was familiar, but it’s always good to be reminded about what you are supposed to be doing.

So here are my key take-aways from the webinar.

1. Don’t try to be a good writer. Instead focus on what your post is trying to say. You should have a clear message, so put your energy into working out what that message is. This is something that I really struggle with. I often don’t know what my message is until I’ve finished writing a few drafts. Sometimes the focus changes halfway through. I often chop the first paragraph off as it’s usually full of waffle.
2. Don’t keep polishing your work, focus on getting it published. You don’t need it to be perfect.
3. Write content that differentiates you. This one always makes me worry. I have no idea what differentiates my writing. Some people say it’s funny (I have a very dry sense of humour) but I’m not usually trying to be funny. I worry that I come across as too earnest some of the time. I don’t want to sound too much like a schoolteacher. I really just want to write honestly and from the heart.
4. Don’t hide. Make sure that you have a picture of yourself on your blog. People like to know who you are. Make sure you write like a real person (see above).
5. Remind people to subscribe and ask them to share your content. I never do this, so perhaps I should start.
6. Bounce back quickly from mistakes. Make a checklist of your frequent errors and check your work before you publish. Examples might be using one particular word too often.
7. Use a variety of content formats. If you are a writer, think about making a video or a podcast. I’ve thought about this but haven’t done it yet.
8. Manage your time. Try to draft your work quickly so that you can spend time on editing and polishing.

There’s some good advice here for writers, bloggers and people making art or doing anything creative. You can spend a lot of time and energy fiddling around with the wrong thing, for example drafting and re-drafting the first sentence, only to chop it off before you hit publish.

You can worry too much about people liking you and your work, but in reality some people will like what you do and some won’t. You just need to accept this this is the way it works.

Thank you for reading my blog. If you like it, please share. (See point 5).

What’s in my inbox?

Hello friends

Have you had a good week? I hope so!

I’ve been away on holiday which means that I’ve missed a few posts, but I hope to make up for that over the next few weeks.

I’m sure that many of you check your inbox each morning hoping you’ve received an email or newsletter that you actually want to read, rather than a whole bunch of unsolicited advertising (aka junk mail). The emails I like receiving most come from friends and family, followed by newsletters from people who deliver content that is surprising, inspiring, thought provoking or just plain funny. Delivering high quality content on a regular basis takes a lot of commitment and I really appreciate people who do that, so I thought I might share some highlights from my inbox with you. If you find it interesting you can subscribe yourself.

The best email I received today was from Austin Kleon. I’ve mentioned him before in a previous post but for those who are unfamiliar with his work, he describes himself as a writer who draws and he’s famous for his book Steal Like and Artist. 

In this book he talks about how to get inspired and what kind of qualities you need to live a creative life – curiosity, stamina, kindness and a willingness to look stupid.

In his latest newsletter he talks about research and suggests that many people use research as a form of procrastination. Admittedly, researching is much more fun than actually writing and it’s something that you can do on more or less an endless basis so it’s easy to pretend that you aren’t procrastinating, you’re just being “well prepared”.

For those of us who are very good at procrastinating (and I count myself in this group) endless research is just one more way of avoiding putting ourselves out there in the world.

The answer?

Kleon suggests that we start before we are ready to start. A scary thought, but perhaps a good suggestion.

I tell myself that I can’t write a book until I’ve learnt more about writing. There are courses I need to take and things I need to know. But perhaps I would also learn those things in the doing, by making mistakes and learning how to fix them as I go along.

All things are possible

Today I want to share a lovely piece by Matthew Burnside that was published in Brevity Magazine, a non-fiction online writing mag that I stumbled upon some time ago. I can never remember how I found things, mostly it’s just the way everyone does it, by tootling around on the web following one link then another and suddenly, hey presto, you’ve arrived somewhere awesome.

I love Brevity Magazine and would love to write a guest post one day.

The writer of this piece teaches creative writing and seems to be something of a master, I think is beautifully crafted.

My favourite bit is where he talks about what success is…

Life has taught me that success, contrary to popular belief, does not consist of a single meteoric leap forward overnight but is rather a series of excruciatingly tedious baby steps so slow you’re convinced at times you’re not even in motion, with an occasional embarrassing trip that knocks you several large steps backwards to leave you reeling—your ego-equilibrium atilt and confidence sore. The “successful” person then is whoever doesn’t buckle under the weight of their own skin, with enough patience to stand firm in their own two shoes. To resist the temptation to choose the easier path, or sit on the curb cursing gravity for not rewarding them with instant gratification, instead continuing to lurch stubbornly toward their dream at a snail’s pace.

Remember that the most precious of all human elements is imagination, second only to love, for in imagination, as in love, all things are possible.

I found this whole post to be very encouraging and very wise, so I hope you enjoy it too.

Writing to discover what you think

You’ll probably be familiar with the quote “I write to know what I think”. I’ve heard this attributed to many writers including Flannery O’Connor, Joan Didion and E.M.Forster. In truth, they probably all made some kind of statement to the effect that writing is an excellent way to unearth the ideas and feelings that you may have been suppressing for one reason or another, or when you aren’t really sure what you think about a topic. Writing gives you a chance to order your thoughts and give them some kind of coherence.

I like the idea in principle but I’m not sure if it really works for me. It’s true that it can be hard to know what you really think about an issue until you sit down and start writing. I’ve often been quite surprised to see the words I’ve written. Sometimes I’m so shocked that I delete them quickly in case I accidentally press the publish button and they escape out into the world for everyone to see.

Sometimes I feel that I’ve been too honest and have left my soft underbelly too exposed.

Yesterday I sat down to write a piece about being boring. More specifically it was about why some people can’t tell that they are being boring and why I am over-sensitive to people being bored by me. I’m acutely tuned in to the tell-tale signs that I’m losing someone’s interest. I can see their eyes slide away and I can read the subtle signs that they want to move on to the next person. Sometimes I think I’m just imagining this but then it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think (I’m boring) therefore I am.

I know that sometimes people get bored because I’m speaking too slowly or too quietly. Sometimes I’m just thinking out loud and I appreciate that this can be intensely irritating. Watching me think must be a bit like watching grass grow. You can almost hear the wheels grinding.

It puzzles me when other people can’t tell that they are being boring. Do they know that this is happening but they just don’t care? Perhaps they feel that what they have to say is more important than the other person’s desire to move away. They just blather on disregarding all of the signs.

Yesterdays’ experiment in free-form writing didn’t go very well, but it’s been a lot more fun today. Yesterday I seemed to be circling round the topic without knowing what I was trying to say, but today I think I’m saying that you don’t necessarily need to know where you are going at the start of a journey, you just need to be open to whatever comes along.  Something of a cliche but certainly true of the kind of writing that I like to do. It’s always a bit of a journey with a few unexpected detours along the way and that’s ok.

The advice to write so that you know what you think flies in the face of all the blogging advice I’ve read over the years. New bloggers are often advised to find their authoritative voice so that people will want to read all of the wise things they have to say. I tried this approach on my other more public blog and I must admit it doesn’t sit well with me. I think I come across a bit like a teacher (which is not surprising as I actually used to be a teacher) and I prefer to just express my ideas here in this fairly anonymous, but nevertheless liberating environment. It’s wonderful to have the chance to think out loud without worrying if I’m losing you somewhere along the way.

So if you made it to the end, cheers and thanks for reading. Let me know if you have any comments. Some chit chat would be fun.

 

A no-fear approach to writing

I’ve just finished reading Use Your Words: a myth-busting, no-fear approach to writing, by Catherine Deveny.  There are quite a few tips in the book that I’d like to pass on, but first I thought I’d tell you what the real impact has been on the way I think about writing, as this may resonate with the way you feel about your creative pursuits.

Let me start by saying that I like to do a little writing on the weekend. Preferably every weekend, but as you can see from my sporadic posting, the reality is that I don’t write every weekend. Mostly I just futz around thinking about writing. I allow myself to be distracted by reading emails, ironing and random bursts of cleaning. Sometimes I even do a spot of gardening. I’m the queen of procrastination and I don’t even have a very tidy house.

I’ve written about this before, but Deveny’s book really highlighted the number of weak excuses that I’ve made over the years for not writing. These range from “I’m doing research” to general excuses around “not feeling inspired” or just having too many other commitments. Clearly my commitment to writing is somewhat lacking which is odd because when I do get around to writing, I really enjoy it.

Anyway, here I am tapping away at the keyboard on a cold Sunday afternoon. Yes folks, it’s freezing here in Australia, I don’t care how warm you are in sunny America or sunny London, I’m wearing four layers of clothing here in OZ. But I digress.

Here are a few brilliant one-liners from the book:

1. I hate writing, I love having written. (Dorothy Parker)
2. Crack your own whip. (Catherine Deveny)
3. No-one is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine. (Margaret Atwood)

Most of all I loved this quote from blogger David Cain.

It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or lack of work ethic, as it is often assumed to be. It’s a neurotic self-defence behaviour that develops to protect a persons’s sense of self-worth.

Procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads to a natural hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability – which is pretty much everything.

I think it explains a lot about why I’m so cautious about writing. Or is it simply another excuse? One of the reasons that I prefer to write on this (nearly) anonymous blog is that none of you are going to come up to me tomorrow and comment on what I’ve written.

Not that I’d mind that of course. I’d love to have a conversation with you, but nevertheless I’m wary about giving too much away in case you think I’m foolish.

How arrogant is that? As Deveny says, no-one really cares. You should stop worrying about what people think and just write, write, write. It’s true that we don’t improve unless we practise and if our fear of failure (or judgement) gets in the way of even making a start, then that’s a very sad thing.

So here’s to more output from me. You can expect some very bad writing, but what the hell.

Should you do a writing course?

I recently found myself in yet another writing slump so I decided to enrol in a blog writing course. I was secretly relieved to find that most of the other participants were relatively new to blogging which meant that I wouldn’t look like a dodo in comparison. Why this matters so much I don’t know. I was very impressed by the quality of their writing and this became my undoing in a roundabout way.

Each week we focussed on a different style of blog post. One week we wrote an opinion piece commenting on an issue in the news or any issue that we had strong feelings about. Another week we had to write a list post in the style of “10 things I hate about you”. At the end of each topic I posted my contributions and waited with baited breath for the comments to flow in. We critiqued one another’s work with kindness and intelligence, which was nice but also slightly unsatisfying. I posted some comments about another student’s grammar (I was trying to be helpful) and received a rather cool “thank you for your feedback” in reply. I’m still not sure if they were offended.

One big plus for the course was that you could post your work and get feedback in a relatively safe environment. I found myself writing quite a lot about grief and loss and it was wonderful to be able to write so freely. I was quite surprised to discover that I have suppressed a lot of sadness and also anger over the last few years. To be honest, I’ve probably done this for my whole life. Since I completed the course I’ve become more self aware but also more anxious generally.

The downside of the course was that the posts we wrote each week did not have to have a theme so at the end I was left with some writing that I quite liked, but didn’t know what to do with it. I’ll probably post it here on this blog that feels quite anonymous and few people actually read. [Although I’d like to say a big THANK YOU if you are reading this, I really appreciate it!].

Another downside was that the standard of writing amongst the group was so high that it actually left me feeling less confident than I felt before. Clearly I spend far too much time comparing myself to others and finding myself wanting.

Due to some issues at work, I was about a week behind in the timetable and the course finished without me. This was a pity because the topic for the last week was being brave and getting published. Perhaps if I’d completed the final week some magic would have happened and I’d be filled with enthusiasm and self confidence.

I wonder if any of you have done a writing course and what the outcome was? Did you feel more confident about your writing at the end? Was it a turning point for you? I’m genuinely keen to hear about your experiences, so please feel free to comment. I promise I won’t critique your work in any way, shape of form!

Dear Muse

A lot has been written over the years about the difficulty of getting started, or maybe getting re-inspired after a hiatus, but nevertheless this post really resonated with me. I am only too conscious that reading about writing is also just another form of procrastination but it’s more fun than doing the ironing.

The Brevity Blog

By Marla Mulloy

Write a letter to your muse, my writer friend said, in answer to my sad, self-loathing, whine about the writing life.  So I did.  I was mad.

Dear Muse,

I haven’t heard from you for a long time.  I wonder, are you having a nice time on your little holiday?  You must be having a holiday; you are certainly not paying any attention to me.  Perhaps you are on a beach somewhere in the sun, reading something that someone has actually written?  Or maybe you are simply watching people cavort in the sand or wander by the ice cream store, bored silly by my procrastination and delusion.   I realize I wasn’t the easiest charge you’ve had.  I realize I was hard to motivate, boring to watch.  Most likely, you are in my living room sitting in that chair that I placed near the small table where I…

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