Every summer, Jericho Writers runs the Friday Night Live competition #FNL. The competition is open to anyone who attends their Summer Festival of Writing, and to enter you submit the first 500 words of your unpublished novel. This year I entered. I felt proud of where my writing has got in the last year and saw the competition as a way to focus my mind on improving it even further so that I could submit something worthy of being long listed. As the date got closer for the announcement of the long listees, I got excited. Would my submission get through?
It didn't. But I still attended the webinars where the long listees read out their submissions for us all to vote on, and I listened intently. I wanted to know what was so much better about their writing than mine that they got through. What was it about these pieces that made them special? Was there anything I could learn? To help you follow where I'm going with this, I've included below the first 120 words of my submission. This is the start of what I entered: 'A gust of wind whipped around Frank and Queenie’s legs as they waited outside for the congregation to settle itself into packed pews. It wasn’t the warmest April. Frank watched as Queenie tucked a stray auburn curl behind her ear and shivered. The calf-length dress she and her Auntie May had spent weeks sewing offered her no protection from the cool sea breeze. Frank rubbed his finger around his shirt collar and fiddled with the knot of his necktie, as if deciding which choked him more. He looked at his niece, his heart full of pride, and as he opened his mouth to speak, emotion grabbed onto his words, catching them like sawdust at the back of his throat.' Listening to the long listees, I heard great openings that captured you straight away. The prose was tight, and the voice strong. Few words were used to hint at great detail, and the sense of a conflict emerged early on. I revisited my opening and asked myself if I ticked these boxes. No, nothing like it. I fully understood why I got nowhere near the long list - or even the longer list of great submissions that didn't get through. I'd missed the mark, and I needed to do something about it. I'll admit, at first I felt disheartened. Who was I to think I can write? Fool. I drowned my sorrows in a cup of camomile tea, and refocused. My first 500 words were jumping about all over the place with points of view from 3 different people. There was nothing to intrigue the reader because I filled in everything they needed to know. My opening line was very ... meh. My prose was a long way from tight. Oh, you get it. What I submitted was just writing, and it wasn't good enough. It took me about 4 or 5 rewrites, but eventually I got there. My opening is now worthy of submitting - well, if it was back to June and I'd written this well back then. And so if I could live this summer over, this is what I'd submit now - the opening 150 words. 'Daisy Doyle was dead, or so her family thought. And yet here she was, standing on the wrong side of the church wall. Watching. Wishing. Her auburn hair was hidden beneath an emerald green headscarf that she could ill-afford. What had she been thinking? Wasting precious housekeeping money on the damned thing. The colour was perfect for Queenie’s wedding. The wedding she wasn’t invited to. Nobody invites a dead mother to a wedding. Standing at the church door, Daisy’s brother, Frank, rubbed his hands together and spoke to the young bride. How old he looked. But then, how many years was it? A gust of wind scattered the last of the cherry blossom like confetti across the churchyard. The bride shivered, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. Her calf-length dress would offer little protection from the May sea breeze. A pretty dress. Who made it for you, Queenie? Not me.' So what, then, did I learn from the Jericho Writers Friday Night Live Competition? I reckon I learned how to write. I'm sure I've much more to learn as I carry on working on my manuscript, but analysing the work of others is definitely helping me to hone my craft. When mum was my age she refused to look after my daughter. A toddler of 3 who needed collecting from private nursery 2 days a week, and taking to the nursery at the school she'd be attending. Mum said no, that was too much to ask. She'd seen how tired grandparents got looking after their grandchildren and 'knew what it was like' for these people she observed in cafes or walking around the park. ‘It isn’t fair to ask someone of 59 to do that,’ she'd say. It's a lot to ask of old people that they look after their grandchildren.
I’m 59. I’m all my mum has left. I look after her, working full time, and she's right. I’m tired looking after her. But the big difference is that as I look after her, she's only going to get older and needs more and more 'looking after'. Had my mum looked after my daughter, she would only have got older and needed less 'looking after'. For the last 5 years we've WhatsApp'd every morning, so that I know she’s still alive. Every evening, on the days she doesn’t need me to do anything for her, I call her up. I ask her how her day has been, and regret asking within seconds. She complains about what a difficult day she’s had. I listen, patiently, thinking of the negotiations I’ve done in work, persuading people to direct scarce resources to the project I support, or finding ways to bring 12 different agencies together on a complicated and complex project, But I listen to my mum telling me how difficult it was to wait 30 minutes on the phone to speak to some customer care guru about a problem I could have sorted for her in 2 minutes flat. Last week she told me about her TV. It's broken. I told her it was an input issue, and was all about the aerial, not the TV. She knew better, of course. Tonight, she tells me that her TV is sorted. It was the aerial. I don't tell her I know, it doesn't help. I have spent the last week stopping her from buying a new TV because of course she will still get the same message ‘Input error. Check your input.’ A new TV doesn’t solve a problem with her aerial. And so again, I am patient as she tells me, she was right, you know. The problem had nothing to do with her TV. How clever was she to stop herself from going out and buying a TV. I agree with her. Very clever indeed. We carry on talking and she asks me how Richard is. My husband is called Rob. I add this to the mental list of mistakes she makes these days, wondering, worrying. Is this the start of a new phase of mothering my mum? In moments like this I remind myself not to correct her, not to tell her she’s wrong. I remind her when she asks of the name of that magician married to Debbie Whats-it - Paul Daniels. Why she wants to remember that, I’ll not ask. I ignore when she calls me Devvy and wonder if it’s memory or comfort that means she calls me by my dad’s name. I pretend not to notice when she can’t recall what you call those words at the bottom of the TV screen, and just throw in a remark that I don't use subtitles because I struggle to read them alongside watching the programme. I ignore a lot. I find both of our lives are easier if I ignore most things. I've tried to write novels for around the last 25 years - plus I wrote short stories before then. But somehow I never got far enough to move from writing, to writing a novel. That changed in February 2020. My daughter, The Angelic One, asked me to join her at an event at Waterstones in Liverpool that was featuring 3 women authors. As one of the writers works in a genre I enjoy, I agreed. What transpired was that Mama Bear bought tea at Pizza Express before the evening event, and Mama Bear bought all 3 books of the authors, with one of them being specifically for The Angelic One, and Mama Bear asked a question that lead to tips number 1 and 2 that kickstarted me writing my novel.
Since then I've listened to podcasts, Instagram Live sessions, webinars, and audio books and I have found that 5 tips resonate with me, so I thought I'd share them with you in case you find them helpful too.
So I'm constantly picking up new tips that help me progress my writing. I'd love to hear your favourite writing tip either in the comments below, or on Twitter - find me as @zoerichardsuk where I share #NovelNotes which are my daily novel notes to myself. When I first started to write I just wrote, let the words flow with no idea where my story was going to go, and only the hint of something in my head about what I might write. I let the ideas develop themselves. Then I came across the 'Snowflake' method which got me thinking about how I could at least have an outline of a plan. And that's what got me realising that I work much better with a plan. From there I learned about having a flatplan from Holly Dawson through a webinar she ran for Jericho Writers. I now have little prompts (you can just make them out in the photo above) which have the chapter, place, date, character list, what happens, and what the purpose of the chapter is. Using these prompts helps me to get my ideas out of my head. And more importantly they help me to keep working on my structure, making sure that everything fits together the way it needs to. By using this approach I spotted some glaring errors in my timeline, and realised that I had one of my characters doing something before a crucial action had happened. Now when I hear people asking the question 'are you a planner, pantser or plantser' which writers seem to ask each other with regularity, I realise that I love to plan ... but I do allow a bit of plain old writing without a plan too, letting a character surprise me with something they do. I remember when Daisy, one of my characters in my work in progress, did something that was so unexpected I actually gasped! I hadn't realised she would do that, but it actually works, and I've kept it in - you'll have to wait to find out what I'm actually referring to, though. It's still a work in progress. The best way to know if you have selected the best approach for you is to ask these 3 questions:
Since school days, when my love for writing and reading started to mature under the tutelage of Mrs Hymers, I've been told to write what I know. Let's face it, though, you're not really that interested in a novel about an NHS programme manager.
Silly though it sounds, I've only recently attuned to what the phrase means. It's not referring to my profession or what I do, but rather it's about writing from a place of knowing. If you know Liverpool like the back of your hand, then write about it, but if you've never been there it's maybe better to concentrate on a place that you do know - or go and visit the city (believe me, it's worth it). However I realise there is something else about 'write what you know' and this place of knowing, and that's the role of research. It's ok for me to research something to the point where when I write about it, you think I have written about what I know. Take the photograph at the top of this post. Flowers in a jug sitting on hessian. What do you know about flowers? A metal milk jug? Hessian? Let's take flowers - we know that some have a delightful scent, that they come in different colours and start with a bud. Some flowers are as beautiful in their death as they are in their blossoming. Flowers can be bought at flower markets but you have to get there in the early hours before most others have stirred in their beds. In fact I know a little about the Liverpool flower market as I've been there to buy flowers and plants on a really cold spring morning before most people have stirred for the day ... and so we can go on. But if you ask me about hessian, well, I don't really know anything about it, other than it's rough, always a beige brown and is used for sack cloth. It's something I can research. What other uses were made of hessian? What's it made from? How does it feel to be wrapped up in hessian? I know, having researched it, that people used to fill hessian sacks with straw or hay to create some semblance of a mattress to sleep on. It was scratchy, and attracted vermin and insects, and people would often wake up having been bitten by fleas and the like. And the milk jug? Well, that transports me back to my Nana's kitchen in Woodlands. We'd get milk from the dairy farm next door, still warm from the cow. I don't remember the taste of it particularly, but I do recall that creamy, rich scent, almost earthy. If you were looking at this photograph and writing what you know, what would it inspire you to write? What's your story? A few years ago I did a creative writing course. At the time, I didn't enjoy it at all that much. It annoyed me. When I reflect back on it now, with the gift of hindsight and a few extra wrinkles, I realise I was expecting it to deliver something that it never promised me it would do. I thought I'd learn how to write a novel. Instead, the tutor was teaching me how to chisel and carve and polish words. It was up to me what I did with them later.
It's obvious to say it now, but a creative writing course is never going to teach us to write a novel. Maybe a 'how to write your novel' course will do that - but even then (having attended one of those workshops, too) I'm not convinced. Any course or workshop can only whet your appetite and nudge you along the way. What, then, did I learn? Stating the obvious here, I learned firstly that I am creative regardless of the fact I'd convinced myself I was nothing of the sort, and secondly, I learned how to use my creativity. The course highlighted to me the way that cliches can get in the way of a good bit of writing, and that it's ok not to use similes and so much other stuff I learned in English class in school. Possibly the greatest thing I got from doing the course is the appreciation of good writing. Which in turn has helped me hone my own ability to write better. But throughout the creative writing course, I hung on to this ever-elusive desire to hurry on and find out how to write that never novel, the one that will never get finished, never see the light of day. In having my eye on the end product, I was too busy missing the value in the moment. If I could go back and do the course again, I'd allow myself to relax into it much more, and look for the craft in stringing together the right words, very much in the right order. I didn't completely miss the learning that was offered to me, and it still pops up to remind me that there is scope to write a sentence, paragraph, chapter with pace and structure. Recently I was reading through a section of my novel that I'd just edited down from around 350 words, full of descriptions of who lived in the family and the way they were brought up, down to this: "Elsie was child number 4, and Ma had another 4 after her. Not that they all lived. She was born in Walton to a mother whose love was damp with the tears of heartache for children lost, and to a father whose love was damp with the beers he drank to hide the pain of a life hard lived." When I reread my creation, I knew I've developed as a writer. I've still such a long journey to meander, but doing that creative writing course has shown me that there is, indeed, a writer within me. Would I recommend doing a creative writing course? Absolutely. Just go into it knowing it's not aiming to help you write a novel. Are you a writer? you ask. I've always loved to read, I say, but a writer? No, not me. Then I wrote down a word, and another joined in, with more to follow from who knows where. Soon I had a sentence, a second, and then one more. A paragraph no less, that flowed with ease into another. And there, right there, a page was formed. A writer, you say? I look down at my page of words and nod. A writer, I am. Back in early summer when I was finishing writing my shitty first draft of my novel I came across Jericho Writers through watching a webinar delivered by the writer Lucy Atkins (Lucy is the writer of Magpie Lane and The Night Visitor, amongst other books). She mentioned that it helps when approaching agents if you can show that you've put some effort into learning the trade of writing, and Jericho Writers was one of the learning environments she referenced.
So I joined, and boy, what learning I encountered from day one. There are masterclasses and webinars, videos and events. One of the first things I watched was a recording from a previous 'Summer Festival of Writing' where Debi Alper was delivering a session about self-editing. I immediately took to her and the approach she takes to editing. I was delighted as I carried on searching through the JerichoWriters.com website and found that Debi runs a six week course with Emma Darwin on how to edit your novel. I booked my place and carried on finishing my novel. And then the course started, end of September. Wow! What a learning experience. Firstly work was put in to developing us as an online community, helping us to reach a place where we were comfortable (hmmm ok, maybe not quite comfortable 😆 ) with sharing our work with a group of strangers. Then we got into the actual work. And that's where the wow comes in. As a group of participants we were encouraged to give feedback on each other's homework before Debi gave feedback. Then, a few days later Debi went into detail with her analysis of our writing, and boy, was it thorough. But you know, the feedback process was also invaluable. I was lucky to share the course with a group of 11 other really skilled writers who were prepared to put time in to giving feedback, and we all found that by giving feedback ourselves we grew to understand the week's lesson in greater detail. After all that each week, Emma Darwin then gave us her take, with a mass of links to useful articles - I'm still working my way through them, there is such a wealth of information that we are given access to. There are few courses where you get such support from the learning community and from the course tutors. I feel extremely privileged to have got a place on the Self Editing course at just the right time in my journey so that I could understand my novel is not an epistolary, it's historical fiction (how could I not know that as I was writing it? 😂 ). I learned about improving the point of view of my main character, and psychic distance (I can't spoil that one for you - when you learn about psychic distance your writing world will change forevermore!), prose and much much more. I also got such strong support and praise which has encouraged me to keep at this. And so now I have moved from a short list of acknowledgements (my mum, my best friend, my daughter ... hmmm ... oh yeah, my husband) to having a long list of all my course colleagues as well as Debi and Emma in my acknowledgements, without whose help my novel would never have had the chance to be picked up by an agent or publisher. Now I'm doing the higher level work of editing that is going to take my fabulous plot based in Liverpool in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s into being a novel that people will want to read. And I hope I can report back next year that it's been picked up by an agent ... and then a publisher. Watch this space. If you choose just one course when you have a first draft to get editing, it has to be the Self Editing course through Jericho Writers. It's worth every penny ... and dare I say it's worth more! My only regret ... the course has finished. Alongside the Self Edit course, I have to say that Jericho Writers is also worth every penny. It's the best decision I made to join over the summer, and I feel very lucky to have found such a supportive community. Many years ago when I was working in a corporate role we brought in Ben Hunt-Davis as a motivational speaker to address our large team of cadets who were completing their training. He talked about how the day of the results wasn't the story - it was all the days leading up to that day that makes the difference. Hunt-Davis talked of how in 2000 at the Sydney Olympics the rowing team, with a history of not winning, were poised to win, how people didn't believe it was possible because their performance was being judged on the basis of the last 7 Olympic rowing teams. He talked about how this was not the judgement - that the true judgement needed to be based on the work he and the other members of the rowing 8 had done to prepare for the race. The question that the team agreed to ask with everything they did has stuck with me all these years. Will it make the boat go faster? Will it make the boat go faster? As a team they agreed that with everything the did they would ask themselves would it make the boat go faster - on the rowing machine, in the gym, going to the pub, attending family functions. Anything that they did in their life they asked that all important question, will it make the boat go faster? If the answer was no, they didn't do it. If the answer was yes, they did. That meant making sacrifices so that on that one day in September 2000 they would achieve a dream that few others before them had experienced. Winning the gold medal. What is your boat? What are you prepared to do to be the person who sacrifices something today that others will never give up, so that you can achieve that dream in the future that others will never experience? What will make your boat go faster today? Here's a clip from Ben Hunt-Davis speaking about 'Will it make the boat go faster?' Do you write book reviews? I write them on Goodreads, NetGalley for the advanced reader copies(ARC) that I get for honest reviews, and on my Instagram account. I sometimes leave reviews on Amazon too.
I've only ever written one bad review - bad as in I gave it 1 star. In the main I don't leave 1-3 star reviews because I assume that it's just not a book for me. The one negative review I did write was for something that should never have been published. There were continuity issues, poor copyediting, unrealistic characters and plot, and the dialogue was stilted and unrealistic. There was little positive you could say about the book. I only finished it because I was on holiday and had little else with me to read. All the other reviews I give tend to be 4-5 star reviews because I'm selective in what I read. I look at the reviews other people leave and I find myself wondering why they written what they did. There are 1 star reviews where people comment that 'this just wasn't my kind of book' - er, well, then it's not a 1 star, is it? It's a poor choice! And then there's the reviews that don't tell me what the person thinks about the book, rather they tell me the story - oh come on! If I want to know the story I'll read it. And spoilers, really, did you have to give away the crucial twist so that it takes away the mystery of the first 200+ pages? Where's that face palm emoji? How, then, do you write a fair book review? Here are my tips. Let's start first with the things not to leave a review about:
Magazine articles, news stories, comments on social media - everywhere you look these days people are into mind-reading. Have you noticed? People are second guessing what has happened, what is going on, what is going to happen, what someone was thinking, what someone was intending - when the truth is ... we just don't know. What happened to reporting the facts?
It's almost like a disease and it's not healthy for you in work or in business - business owners assume that customers won't ever pay this much, or that clients won't ever want that product. What happened to market research? The only thing we can be sure of in business, just as in life, is our own thoughts, our own behaviours. Market research informs us so that we don't need to second-guess, we can avoid the mind-read disease. And in work I hear people talking about why this person did that, and what the other person was thinking when they did this. I've had countless number of people tell me over the years what I meant by something I said - when in fact I meant what I actually said! I have to put my hand up though - I am guilty of my own fair share of mind-reading. But it's not a talent I want to master. It's not on my list of strengths to be proud of. In fact, I am more proud of myself these days when I notice that I've NOT assumed that I know what somebody else is thinking, what they meant by what they said. Mind-read just gets in my way. You see, when we engage in mind-read we are saying so much more about ourselves than we are others. Mind-reading isn't some clever art form to be maximised. It's not a treasure, something to be marvelled at. Mind-reading can damage relationships, it can get in the way of understanding the reality of a situation. It can stop us progressing, stop our growth, both personally and in the workplace. How can you spot when you're getting into a mind-read scenario? Our mind-read is generally surrounded by generalisations such as 'nobody' or 'everybody', 'always', 'never', or if we're reading one person's thoughts we'll discover ourselves stating as fact something that is in fact a guess. I find the easiest way is to be asking myself questions like 'really?' 'always?' 'nobody?' and so on. Additionally, I will check in 'did this person tell me that or am I in fact guessing?' If you find it hard to notice your own mind-read behaviours, it may be easier to listen to how others talk first. Check out when they are assuming things for other people, or when they are making sweeping generalisations. It becomes a really fun game, and pretty soon you'll easily spot the mind-read moments. What can you do about it? Firstly we need to be honest with ourselves, we need to acknowledge that we get into mind-reading. Next time you catch yourself doing it, stop! Take a breath and ask yourself 'what is this saying about me?' Check in to see if there is a lesson for you to learn that will take you much farther on in your journey than a few seconds of 'fame' for being able to mind-read. When we set mind-reading aside we can give our business a greater opportunity to grow. The mind-read may help us to be aware, to be mindful of what is going on around us, and so checking in with the mind-read that is going on will be invaluable to you in work or in your business. Equally though, setting the mind-read aside gives us the chance to research, to test, to investigate, to ask. When you assume an outcome or somebody else's thoughts, you are limiting yourself and your outcomes. How much better to check things out and be sure - you may even find that somebody WILL be happy to pay this much, buy that product, or have you work on that project. You may just be the answer to their prayers. Time to go and get mind-read-spotting - what have you done today that relied on you assuming what someone else was thinking? Things are going perfectly for you, you've never had it so good ... and then bam! You fall ill, you have an accident, you make a big mistake with something you know well. It's called the upper limit problem, something defined by Gaye Hendricks in his book The Big Leap (well worth a read, or a listen on Audible).
Why are we talking about this here? Because during times of change we often find ourselves sabotaging those things that are working well for us. We get used to the status quo, the familiar. And change threatens that. We're hardwired to protect ourselves, so naturally our deeper consciousness will do anything to keep things as they are. Strangely when this instinct kicks in we don't just protect ourselves from bad stuff, we also harm the good going on in our lives too. It's almost like some deep-seated fear of success holds us back by sabotaging. If you disagree, just think about the times you've picked a fight with your partner, or lost concentration and crashed or bumped the car. Then there's those times when you need to say something important and find jibberish comes out instead, or you lose your car keys when you've got somewhere important to get to ... maybe you've even lost your passport and only realise moments before you're due to leave to get an important flight. I could give you plenty more examples, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. I first noticed my habit for self-sabotage when I found myself telling someone I seemed to have develop a habit for always being late, watching the train pull away from the platform just as I got there, or getting caught in traffic when I had an important meeting to get to. For some reason, that day was a wake up call for me. She suggested I read The Big Leap, and with each page I turned I discovered more about myself than I'd learned in years. Possibly the most important thing for me to learn was that I could do something about this sabotage life I'd created for myself. So I started experimenting with my tardiness. Here's the three steps I used then, and still use today whenever I catch myself engaging with self-sabotage:
I'm nearly 60 (well, 58, so less than two years to go!) and this is my life. I can't believe I've lived so much of it and I still have so much to do, so much to learn. The angelic one, my daughter for the last 28 years and hopefully for many more, broke my heart when she buggered off to university broke it again when she got married, and then proceeded to sew it all back together when she developed a stronger bond with us than we'd ever had before. It's her turn, time for her to test the water and jump in. But that doesn't mean my time is over - yet! A little bit about me, I'll be 60 in the first week of 2022 - not that long off - and yet I don't feel much over 30! In my head I'm only 26 - so I don't know who that old lady is who looks back at me with wrinkles and saggy skin when I glance in the mirror. I'm a Northern Lass, born in a small market town on the outskirts of Liverpool, a town not sure if it belongs to Liverpool or Lancashire, a town that only just scrapes into having an M&S Food shop, without the full store, a town that survives only because it has a university and a market, though it is still stuck in the old style market with granny knickers baring, all alongside the delights of giant bubble blowers, thick woolly socks and shiny bright saucepans all for under a fiver. Not being for me, I moved as far away as I could get from marketville - well, as far away as I could get with a Scouse husband who doesn't want to leave his beloved republic of Liverpool. We landed in The Port of the South in the North (in truth there is no port, and it's not in the South, but hey, that didn't seem to matter to the Victorians who named the place 'Southport'!) in 1990, the land of many pseudo-riche and the beach that people think is devoid of sea (it only comes in twice a day, like the sea anywhere, but people seem to think they never see it) and we hope in the next decade or so we may be accepted as locals. The angelic one arrived in '92, followed by the scruff (Sam, a 'sprollie', also known as a collie-spaniel cross, and the angelic one's little brother) in '99. Sadly the scruff left us in 2010, doggy dementia having got the better of him and us. Since then we've moved into a house we adore, gained MillyMoo the Cockapoo (that the adult angelic one calls her little sister), and occasionally the grandpup, Peanut the Poodle Pup (she's grown up now, but the name has stuck). I have a little writing and reading room, which is where I craft my novel and writing to you, and where I work for the NHS for far too many hours since the pandemic took over. Ideas can come from anywhere. The important thing is to capture those ideas when they hit you. The problem I find is that ideas have this mean habit of landing on you in the most inconvenient places. I can be there in the shower and a great thought flits into my head, or I'm in the middle of a run and there it is, an idea bouncing around inside my brain.
There have been times when I wake up with a sentence or even a paragraph, and I have to capture it straight away. If I don't, it's in danger of doing a kangaroo hop into the world of forgotten words. I now carry a notebook with me everywhere - just a little one. Then when I'm watching TV, overhearing a conversation, reading an article, or just finding something weaves itself into my mind, I can capture enough to be able to work it up into a usable titbit later. Where, then, can you get your ideas from? Here's a few thoughts that might help you:
By the way, if you're someone who likes to work completely digitally, try Evernote. It's an app and software that allows you to create the online version of a set of filing cabinets for all those things you come across and want to keep. My mojo has taken a hike. There's a good reason for it. My husband, Scouse Lad, has been rushed into hospital with chest pains and breathing difficulties. With the whole lockdown and CoViD-19 I'm not allowed to go with him, so I sit patiently (not really) at home, waiting to hear how things are going. So I can be forgiven for losing my mojo. But for me, having no mojo, that's a time to write, particularly with these circumstances. I need a distraction. So write I will. The reason for this, I find that when I'm struggling to write I need to simply let the words flow. It doesn't have to be good writing, it simply has to be words. I can go back later and edit. It really doesn't matter if this is an Eric Morecambe/Andre Previn moment - remember that? In this context it's 'all the right words, just not necessarily in the right order". Did you know that editing is writing? I heard that on a podcast and realised that I'm someone who uses editing as a way to get into my writing just about everyday. I'll revisit my work from the day before and spend 10 minutes tidying it up before I start on a new section of my novel. For me, it's a great way to ease my brain into the writing process. With blogposts, I find that if I just write something down, I don't need to publish it straight away, so I can come back and edit it when my mojo walks back in through the writing room door. When your mojo next takes a hike, try one of these three methods:
No matter what I've done throughout my life, there's always someone to shout out about it only being possible to be this or that if you've suffered the dark night of the soul. Apparently, writing is no different. I can only be a writer if I have had a book published, and if I started writing before I hit my mid-30s.
I've got news for you. I'm a writer. I'm not yet published. But then, that's my own fault because I've not made time to see a novel all the way through to its natural conclusion. And I'm way past 35, which again, I guess is my fault because I got older. And yet I am able to put words down on a page, I'm able to string together a sentence, and create paragraphs, and lo and behold there we are, I'm writing. If anyone has told you that you're not a writer I suggest you smile and wave, and do your own thing. I'll forever be thankful of 3 authors I met at a book event in Liverpool's Waterstones because they encouraged me to keep going, to get to that point where I have something publishable. And at no point did they suggest I am not writer until or unless ... So thank you to Caroline Corcoran, Amanda Brooks and Rachel Lucas for believing that anyone can be a writer as long as you put words down on a page. Let's get writing. In the NHS we hear all the time how we need to create, or change, the culture. And I ask, do we? How many companies or organisations have staff who work considerably more hours than they are paid for? How many have staff who get spat at, sworn at, shouted at but still they do the job they are paid for? How many put up with racial and sexual abuse yet quietly carry on with their job?
Few, so few. And yet still we hear that there is a problem with our culture. Is it really our culture that needs to change? In the NHS we have staff who are compassionate, caring and kind. Is that not a culture we want to nurture, to cultivate? Instead I find myself questioning whether it's some behaviours and attitudes that need to change. There is much research to say that culture change takes years - in some cases it can take decades. However behaviours and attitudes can be change in months, weeks, days ... moments even. Sure, there are pockets of cultures in the NHS where something is not quite right. One Trust I worked in had a culture that was odd to say the least - even though so many people were kindhearted and caring, there was also a thread of blame that seemed to infect everything and everyone. Yet these pockets are not the norm. And even where they are, I believe we can influence cultures by our attitudes and behaviours. Ghandi told us 'be the change you want to see in the world' - and in being that change we can start by addressing our own behaviours, our personal attitudes. Here's my tips for what each of us can do today, in the moment:
Is it really our culture that needs to change? Or can you start a quicker process of change by addressing your own behaviours and attitudes? After all, it only takes a moment to start to change the world. We're going through challenging times in politics with people speaking out on Brexit, bullying and anti-semitism. It's creating an interesting mix of reactions from those who are finding their voice to those scared to speak out for fear of the repercussions. And it's clear that those of us who know our voice owe it to others to speak up and speak out. We need to challenge the status quo, challenge the return to old ways, challenge the excuses that are given for why women are not on the stage, challenge the manels (panels made up of men), challenge the intimidation, the aggression, the silencing.
Let's start with bullying behaviours. There's no excuse for bullying, but it's also true to say that many of those engaged in bullying behaviours are blissfully unaware that is what they are doing. In too many cases the bully adopts controlling and intimidating behaviour when they have no positive role model to learn from, when their behaviour goes unchecked and therefore appears to be acceptable, when they lack training and development in how to lead their team in a supportive way with a firm and fair management style. Because of this it's important that the actions of the bully are called out. And then the bully needs support to understand the impact of their behaviours with guidance on alternative approaches. Coaching is the perfect support mechanism for the recovering bully - but the old joke stands. You know the one. How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb really has to want to change. So if the bully doesn't recognise the negative impact of their behaviour, it's unlikely they will acknowledge the need to get help. What if you worry you are the bully? The fact you're worrying about it is great. There's a high chance you are anything but, however if you are displaying any bullying behaviours, your awareness is your saviour. Have you come across 360 degree feedback? This is a great way of getting an understanding of how you come across to your staff, peers, and manager. People are asked to complete a questionnaire about your, and you receive a report that gives you an indication of how your behaviour is perceived by others. The temptation is to only include those people who will give you a positive response, however the point is to find out how they receive your behaviour from a cross section of people so that you discover as much as you can about the impact of your actions. What if you are the victim of the serial intimidator? Start by keeping notes. Remove the emotion and simply record facts - on this day this happened, and then that happened with these people involved and I felt ... You also need to speak up to someone. If you can, speak to your manager but if you find that difficult, maybe because your manager ignores you or because they are the bully, then speak to HR team or your union rep. If you work for somewhere that has a Freedom to Speak Up guardian, then talk to them. And if things still don't change, you need to consider whether you are working in a place with values that align with your values. If not, it's time to move. But you know, I really believe that this is the last resort. The bullies don't deserve to have their behaviour condoned by inaction. Our workplaces should never be places we fear to go, where we fear to speak up in case we lose our jobs or damage our opportunities for promotion. The person speaking up cannot be perceived as the problem for calling out the bullying and intimidating behaviour. So I ask this of you.
How many times have you been to a meeting and come away feeling like it was a complete waste of time? It happens all too often, doesn't it? And the reason is that the person holding the meeting has probably not put the foundations in place to make the meeting matter. There are 12 simple steps you can follow when you're calling the meeting to make sure that people attending think your meetings matter.
I've noticed people thinking of Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) as a piece of work that has an end date. That's the wrong way to look at it. You see, if it finishes on a set date, that means that people don't need to keep going with getting it right first time (I'm trying so hard not to turn GIRFT into the verb 'to GIRFT'!). But we know we have to keep GIRFTing (oops, I failed!) because all patients today, tomorrow, next week, next year ... right on into the future, everyone deserves their health care to be right first time. And that requires a mindset change.
We need to think of GIRFT as a methodology. And that's based around 5 fundamental elements:
So if we accept that GIRFT is a methodology rather than a piece of work with an end date, what does that mean for an NHS Trust? It's simple really - improvement is a continuous process, it becomes the norm (in the original Total Quality Management approach this is called 'kaizen' which is applied once change becomes business as usual). Doing GIRFT needs to become embedded within business as usual, as part of Trust quality improvement strategies, and assessed within CQC. Plus the methodology can be applied anywhere in the organisation. Literally anywhere. People can identify where there is unwarranted variation and unnecessary waste, and using data alongside evidence of best practice, changes can be delivered to ensure that best practice becomes the new normal. With all of this in mind, what has been the learning in recent weeks?
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Hello!Welcome to the Journal. This is where I post musings, learning, tips and ideas. |