Blog - Wordstruck

26 Steps part 3 – how constraints encourage creative thinking

Black and white photo of the sea and beach huts

Overstrand to Paston – photo by Merryn Henderson

The 26 walks that provide inspiration for 26 Steps start at a place name beginning with each letter of the alphabet and take the writer to a place starting with the next letter in the sequence.

Each writer took a black and white photograph and drew a map as a visual guide to their journey as well as recording their thoughts, feelings and observations in a sestude – a form that requires 62 words exactly.

As a writer, I enjoy a constraint. Despite their name, they actually open up creative processes and often give me a way of tackling the terror of a blank page. Having a reason to write and a framework to do it in helps me to focus in on ideas and encourages me to think in new ways as I seek to fit the brief.

Meeting the brief is what I do professionally for my copywriting clients too, meeting their requests for writing for different formats, audiences and purposes. Short copy, long copy, writing for video, writing for an advert, writing for a website – they all have their constraints.

For 26 Steps, the constraint of following the alphabet from place to place meant that writers took in a range of landscapes; rivers, woods, farmland, coastal fringes, urban areas and mountains. The writing has a similarly varied theme, from lyrical wanderings, to urban humour, from physical geography to the landscape of the mind via history and memory.

The third section of the journey takes us from Wales to the Scottish Borders, through the industrial history of North East England to a Norfolk pilgrim’s path, through the alphabet from K to P and includes the first of my contributions (more of that later).

Step 11: Knighton to Lower Harpton, Powys by Sandy Wilkie

Step 12: Llandegla to Moel Famau, Denbighshire by Ed Prichard

Step 13: Morebattle to Nisbet, Scottish Borders by Joan Lennon

Step 14: North Shields to Old Hartley, Tyne and Wear by Michelle Nicol

Step 16: Overstrand to Paston, Norfolk by Merryn Henderson

Follow the journey on twitter #26Steps.

26 Steps part 2 – walking in the landscape

By Michelle on in 26

Lakes stone wall – Photo by Carol McKay

From the Brontes to Wordsworth, walking in the landscape has been a rich source of inspiration for writers. We used this as a theme for 26 Steps to encourage a sense of connection between the acts of walking and writing.

There is something mindful about taking the time to watch and listen as we walk along a route, observing the changing weather, hearing the birdsong or traffic noise, letting the motion of our footsteps relax our physical selves and open our minds.

As a runner, I often choose to get up early and enjoy the sights and sounds of the coast where I live. Even if I’m not conscious of my surroundings, they creep in as I feel the effects of air temperature and weather, or realise that the waves are booming and crashing in time to my rasping breaths.

When I slow down and walk, I inevitably, consciously take in a lot more of my surroundings, and can find new things even in places I’ve visited hundreds of times before – a piece of sea glass washed up on the shore, a pattern of footprints, or the colour of the sky.

For #26 steps we wanted to capture the essence of a journey by asking each writer to contribute a walk, together with a black and white photograph, a hand drawn map and a sestude – just 62 words to describe their experience, thoughts and inspirations.

The second stage takes a journey from the magical Giant’s Causeway, through Belfast, to the English Lake District and the tough Yorkshire Hills, to pause in the literary world of Oxford and through the alphabet from F to K.

Step 6: Feigh to Giant’s Causeway, Antrim by Aimee Chalmers

Step 7: Grey Point to Holywood, Belfast Lough by Gillian McKee

Step 8: Hawkshead to Ings, Lake Windermere by Carol McKay

Step 9: Ilkley to Jack Hill, Yorkshire by Emily Jeffrey-Barrett

Step 10: Jericho to Kennington, Oxford by Rebecca Dowman

Enjoy the photographs, maps and sestudes inspired by these walks.

Launching 26 Steps

By Michelle on in 26

Bridge over the Fife – photo by Laura Clay

This week saw the launch of 26 Steps the latest creative writing project from 26. It’s an idea inspired by writing in the landscape and uses the 100th anniversary of the publication of John Buchan’s famous novel ‘The 39 Steps’, as a starting point.

Together with co-creator and fellow writer and editor, Sandy Wilkie, I invited members of 26 to join us on a creative quest. We identified 26 short walks throughout the UK, going from a place name beginning with each letter of the alphabet to somewhere starting with the next letter in the sequence.

The challenge for each writer was:

Do the walk
Take a black and white photograph to represent the journey
Draw a sketch map of the route
Write a sestude (62 words exactly) inspired by the experience

The walks took place between March and May 2016. The journeys cover a wide range of landscapes from the Scottish Isles to the Cornish coast, from the Giant’s causeway to the hills of north Wales and draw a wonderfully rich and eclectic portrait of the landscape and its effect on us.

You can see the first five virtual postcards online now, with more steps being revealed each week until 17 October. The first steps take us from Herefordshire to Scotland and onto Surrey and through the alphabet from A to F.

Step 1: Aymestry to Byton, Herefordshire by Aidan Baker

Step 2: Boarhills to Crail, Fife by Linda Cracknell

Step 3: Carbasserie to Dunadd, Argyll by Keira Brown

Step 4: Dorking to Epsom Downs, Surrey by Sue Evans

Step 5: Edinburgh to Fife, Fife by Laura Clay

Enjoy dipping into the images, words and maps. I hope they inspire you to explore these walks or others in your own landscape, and to use them in your own creative way.

Helping a new client find the right tone of voice

By Michelle on in business, language, Marketing

I’m really focused on work for a new client at at the moment. I’m helping them to define and articulate their tone of voice and writing some of their marketing materials. It’s a new area of business for me, but one that I really believe in, so it’s exciting and challenging and I’m deciphering a whole new range of jargon and acronyms.

So how do I go about helping an organisation to find its tone of voice? Surely that’s something that people who have more experience of the business should do?

Well, actually, looking at things with a fresh pair of eyes, or hearing things with a fresh pair of ears can be a real advantage. I’m more likely to pick up on the things that have always been said or written like that, and ask why. And because I’m new, people understand if I ask lots of questions.

So how do I develop a tone of voice for a business that I’m only just starting to get familiar with?

Listen

First of all I listen, or more often, read anything and everything I can get my hands on. The website is a good place to start, and social media too. I go and dig around and visit the little visited pages, the nuts and bolts and hidden corners.

Observe

I take notice of my environment, the posters, adverts, leaflets, screens all around me. And I get my hands on letters, emails, communications of all sorts.

Research

I talk to people too, find out about what they do, who their audience are and what challenges they face in their communications. I look for common themes, poke out clichés and get an ear for common phrases that have become a little dull through over use.

From there I start to get a feel for what’s authentic, what feels right and what feels a bit old and tired and needs shaking up a bit. And I start to play it back to the people who write and encourage them to hear what’s being said as thought it’s new to them too.

Gather evidence

Along the way I’m gathering examples of the good, the ‘could do better’ and the ‘what is this?’ I’m learning about the audiences from research and conversations with some of them too.

Guide

I’ve been helped by re-reading We, Me, Them and It (How to Write Powerfully for Business) by John Simmons. This very readable book, recently republished my Urbane publications, demonstrates how words and language can help differentiate one business from another and add life to products and services.

What’s been most helpful to me has been John’s insight into how he put this into practice with real examples from his work with brands like the Royal Mail, Anglia Railways and Cable and Wireless. It’s a kind of ‘behind the scenes’ view that’s the next best thing to having been there at the time and says as much about the approach and challenge as it does about the results.

Last week I ran a workshop with some of the marketing team, combining some of my observations with their thoughts and experiences. It’s reaffirmed that I’m on the right track with my approach and thinking.

Developing a brand tone of voice is a fascinating process and one I love. I can quickly get a feel for how an organisation sounds and adapt my writing style to theirs. Encouraging it to make changes to help it sound more distinctive and to have its own voice will take a little longer but I’m already on the case, devising tips, tricks and examples to bring it to life.

LA22 9SH a poetic postcode

By Michelle on in 26

LA22 9SH is the postcode for Dove Cottage in Grasmere where Wordsworth and his family lived from 1799 to 1808 and the inspiration for my latest creative piece now published online.

Last year I was selected as one of 26 writers to take part in a creative collaboration based on postcodes.This coded shorthand of letters and numbers identified a place which we were to use as inspiration to write a sestude – 62 words exactly.

This week, which marks the anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth, my sestude appears online as part of the 26 postcodes collection, together with it’s back story. You can read them on the 26 postcodes site.

I felt I got lucky with my postcode, with its obvious literary connections and its scenic beauty. But at the same time, I felt the pressure of trying to write something that would measure against one of England’s best known poets.

Despite having studied English literature, Wordsworth wasn’t really a writer who I had studied or was familiar with much beyond his most quoted poem, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud‘.

So I read more of his poems, did some research into his biography and discovered a writer far more challenging and interesting than the chocolate-box image of a Lakes poet would imply.

The exhibition in the museum at Dove Cottage also filled in many biographical and personal details. And shows how much Wordsworth relied on his sister Dorothy to record and recall the scenes of every day life that inspired his writing. In a page of her Grasmere journal on display, she writes of the daffodils brought to life in that oft-quoted poem.

It’s been so long since I wrote my sestude about Wordsworth and Dove Cottage that I enjoyed coming back to it, reading it afresh, almost as though it was written by someone else. I can trace every line back to an object, thought or sensation experienced in that place. It’s a location that continues to inspire.

The worlds within books

By Michelle on in books, reading, Uncategorised

“A book is a world full of words where you live for a while.” Patrick Ness, More Than This

I was talking to someone recently about my time at university and half-jokingly remarked that during my 3 years studying, I only lived part time in the 20^th Century.

I discovered a love of medieval literature and stories even older than that from Beowulf to the Pearl poet. My favourite lectures, tutorials and studies were based on old works – Chaucer, Spenser, Sidney, Milton.

These days I’m more contemporary in my reading but I still love that feeling of walking another landscape, sampling another culture or stepping into another experience that I get through reading both fact and fiction.

Last week’s charity challenge of walking 10,000 steps per day gave me some appreciation of the time and effort it takes women and girls in the developing world to fetch water for their families. But arguably books and stories take me even further.

I’ve been to Botswana with Alexander McCall Smith and Mma Ramotswe; eaten in the best places in San Francisco with Amy Tan and even been into space with Commander Chris Hadfield.

I’ve time travelled to Victorian London with Dickens and to Regency period Bath with Jane Austen. I’ve walked the streets of Ankh Morpork; survived a shipwreck on an alien planet where men can hear each others thoughts, and travelled beyond Wall into Faerie (and made it back again). Books take me places I could never go.

I will never know what it means to be a black woman transplanted from Nigeria to the USA; to have my hair chemically relaxed, or tightly braided in a salon. I’ll never experience racism in all its different shades and colours. But, thanks to the book I’m currently reading, ‘Americanah’ by Chimananda Ngozi Adiche, I know about these experiences. And through reading I’ve seen the world through another person’s eyes.

I am grateful to books for all the worlds they allow me to live in for a while.

Going with the flow – how writing is like paddling down the Tyne

By Michelle on in creative, writing

On Saturday, I went on an adventure, kayaking down the River Tyne with three of my friends. The spur was to be fearless, to do something we hadn’t done before. It was a brilliant afternoon.

Today it has me reflecting on watery phrases, and how they can be used as a metaphor for the writing process.

Our guides for the day were the Cullercoats Bike and Kayak crew, making sure we were safe, helping us navigate the river and coaching us on paddling the route. We began at Derwenthaugh, getting into the river opposite the Vickers Armstrong factory – a reminder of the long industrial heritage of this busy, working river.

We had waited for the tide to turn, so we would ride with the flow out towards the sea. But on first entering the water in our unfamiliar craft, the tide was slack. At first, getting the hang of paddling and steering had some of us going round in circles, and progress was slow.

Figuring out port and starboard

Slack water is where you have to put some effort in to move forwards. It’s like the start of a writing project, where I’m learning new things about a client and their business, about their customers and what they want and need. It’s about taking on board new information, trying things out, getting a feel for the project.

At this stage, I’m learning new terms and language. Like getting to grips with my paddle, this might feel clumsy or cumbersome at first, but soon it starts to feel more natural. I might try out a few phrases, and find I’m steering the tone of voice too far towards the informal, so I get feedback and correct my course.

As we got used to our craft and more confident in abilities to control our direction, we began to feel the river flow faster, and as we paddled it felt like we were cutting through the water, picking up pace.

Floating down river

Travelling with the tide, going with the flow is what it feels like when I’m writing in the zone, when the words come quickly and easily. It’s the first draft, when I don’t think, don’t judge, just write and let the ideas and thoughts take shape on paper. Progress is quicker and there’s a sense of excitement and exhilaration.

Soon we approached the Tyne’s iconic bridges. Always a sight to stir my heart, and never more so than on this adventure, seeing their familiar lines and arcs from a new perspective. Paddling beneath the seven bridges that span the great river as it travels through the heart of the city is something I will never forget.

New perspectives

From water level, the Tyne’s bridges take on a new dimension. Their scale is epic. The engineering impressive. Their stanchions deep in the river narrowing the navigable route.

Seeing things from a new angle is useful tool for writing too. Sometimes I have to get into the detail to discover the small clue that unlocks the heart of the story. At other times, it’s the broader sweep, the wider view of how a business fits in its landscape of customers and community that will give me the right perspective.

If I find myself stuck, taking a physical, or mental wander around, drinking in the experience of sights, sounds smells, tastes and feelings is a sure fire way of generating new ideas, phrases and insights. Looking at objects from a new and unfamiliar perspective gives me a new angle for writing about them too.

Smooth waters

Beneath the magnificent bridges, the river was glassy smooth. In the heart of the busy city, gulls flew overhead and there was silence apart from the odd rumble of a car or a train passing by overhead. This gave us time to slow down, admire the view and enjoy the sensation of having part of the river to ourselves.

In writing, that’s like the polishing and editing process. The time when I slow down and look at the words on the page carefully, weighing each one, considering its place. Like the river, sometimes this can be a choppy process and it can feel like I’m being buffeted to and fro. The goal is to navigate the chop, using my skills and experience to turn the finished piece into smooth prose that sounds naturally as though that’s the way it’s meant to be.

Thanks to Cullercoats Bike and Kayak for looking after us, supplying all the equipment and being excellent guides for our river tour. Special thanks to my friend Sue for saying she wanted to have a go in a kayak; to Roger and Tove for being the right kind of daft to go along with it; and to Penny for taking some excellent photos of us on the river.

Taking a walk in her shoes

By Michelle on in CARE International

“You never really know a man until you understand things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

This quote from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one of many variations on the theme of walking in another’s shoes, to gain an understanding, an empathy with our fellow beings on this planet.

Every day, in countries all over the developing world, women and girls have to walk long distances to fetch water for drinking, cooking and cleaning. This water is often dirty and infected and because they have to spend time collecting it, these children and women miss out on the chance to go to school or to work.

That’s why I’m supporting CARE International to provide safe clean water to communities in the developing world by taking part in the Walk in Her Shoes challenge.

Every day for a week, from 5 to 12 March, I’ll be walking 10,000 steps to represent the distance that women and girls have to travel each day just to fetch water for their families.

I’m asking you to sponsor me so that I can help CARE International provide clean water to communities in the developing world and give women and girls the chance of a better future.

To give you an idea, 10,000 steps is approximately 7km or just over 4 miles. That’s well over an hour’s worth of walking every day.

You may think that I’m pretty active, and I do try to be, but on a typical working day I manage around half that number of steps. On some days it’s far less. So I’ll have to plan to work in those extra steps, before work, on my lunch break and into the evening.

So I’ll be offering to do the tea run, willingly going on errands, taking the stairs and going the long way round. Would anyone like to lend me their dog?

Unlike the women and girls I’m representing, I won’t have missed out on opportunities to go to school, get an education and a job because of the time spent collecting water every day.

In supporting me, it’s those women and girls you’ll really be helping. By providing something as simple as access to safe, clean drinking water, you can help not only improve health and sanitation, but offer real change for the future through the opportunity of education and work. Helping people help themselves.

So if you can spare a few quid, please drop it into my virtual online bucket: www.justgiving.com/Michelle-walk2016 You’ll be helping relieve another woman of the burden of carrying water for her family.

If you’re in or near London you can join the International Women’s Day Walk on 6 March. Enjoy rousing music and hear from passionate 21st century suffragettes, then march in solidarity with the world’s poorest women and girls.

Walking, wandering, writing

By Michelle on in 26

I’ve been reading a fair bit of Charles Dickens recently, and was reminded by this post of his habit of talking great long walks at night in the London streets.

You can hear those endless trampings in his novels. His knowledge of the city emerges in descriptions of streets filled with cobbles and alleyways, stairwells and courtyards; from the labyrinth of Coketown in Hard Times to the business of lodgings, stationers, writers’ garrets and legal chambers around the Chancery court in Bleak House.

“Doors were slamming violently, lamps were flickering or blown out, signs were rocking in their frames, the water of the kennels, wind-dispersed, flew about in drops like rain.” Dickens conjures up a grim night to be out in Our Mutual Friend.

Walking in the landscape is something we might more readily associate with the Romantic poets, or nature writers. Yet Dickens’ urban landscape is just as important as Wordsworth’s Lake District or the Bronte’s Yorkshire Moors.

For me, there’s something in that act of walking, a repeated action requiring little conscious thought that lends itself to writing, or at least thinking about writing.

In wandering, literally and mentally, the mind finds a freedom from everyday cares, and the subconscious surfaces. I’ve often found that a walk, or a run, will give me a new direction when I come back to a piece of writing, without me deliberately seeking it.

So I’m excited to be starting a new writing project that sets walking in the landscape at its heart. This spring, 26 writers will take a walk in the UK, going from a place name beginning with each letter of the alphabet to another place starting with the next letter in sequence (e.g. Boarhills to Crail).

We’ll be taking photographs, drawing maps and writing a sestude – 62 words exactly, inspired by our wanderings.

The walks cover parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and reach from Somerset and Cornwall in England to my beloved North East coast in Northumberland. They will take in a range of landscapes; rivers, woods, farmland, coastal fringes, urban areas and mountains.

As one of the writers, I’m looking forward to taking a fresh look around my own landscape. And as co-editor, along with Sandy Wilkie, I’m looking forward to hearing about distant places I’ve never visited. It will be a chance to travel in my imagination as far, or further than I travel in reality.

Watch out for more news of #The26Steps this spring.

Celebrating small businesses that make a big difference

By Michelle on in business

As well as being the birthday of one of my musical heroes, David Bowie, this year 8 January also marked #MicroBizMattersDay. It’s a day where everyone’s encouraged to show appreciation for the small, independent businesses that drive the economy by taking to social media and sharing the love.

Technically a micro business employs 0-9 people. That could be any type of business, but typically they are the kind of local, independent going concerns that provide jobs in a small community and whose owners work long and hard to provide an income for themselves and their families. They could be retail shops or handy services, people who work from home or businesses that get out and about, online or off.

One of the many things I like about where I live is that there are plenty of these independent shops and businesses. Places that offer a more personal experience than the big brands and corporate chains. On #MicroBizMattersDay I took to twitter to show my support for some of them. Here are just three of many I could have chosen:

Children of the Revolution

Tynemouth’s coolest shop for quirky gifts and trendy clobber for kids and teens. This is my first stop when I have to buy a new baby gift, with radical bibs and babygrows that help me maintain my reputation as the cool auntie and fuel the imaginations of niece, nephews and baby brothers to grow up to be superheroes.

Their Christmas shop window is legendary on Front Street as are their displays all year round, and with gifts inside featuring the likes of Doctor Who and Star Wars, there’s plenty for this big kid to enjoy too. If you’re looking for something out of the ordinary and with a sense of fun, it’s a great place to visit. And they gift wrap too!
Find Children of the Revolution on facebook

Riley’s Fish Shack

The latest, hippest eaterie on the north east coast brings the freshest local fish and seafood from the North Shields fish quay to the grill in the shack at King Edward’s Bay. Enjoy the catch of the day with fresh salad, fried potatoes and flatbreads accompanied by the sound of the waves as you look out over golden sand.

This crowd-funded business already has a loyal army of fans who can now enjoy a bite to eat, a coffee or excellent ales from Wylam brewery on tap. It’s hard to believe the steam-punk inspired shack began life as a couple of shipping containers. It’s a buzzing and friendly hang-out where you’re sure of a warm welcome even on the chilliest day.

@RileysFishShack

G&S Organics at Christmas Farm

It should be clear by now that I’m a writer who loves my food and these guys have been keeping me supplied with the very best ingredients via their organic box scheme for several years. Meat, fruit and vegetables delivered fresh to my door direct from the producer every week, helps me to eat seasonally, healthily and with minimal impact on food miles too.

With regular newsletters, facebook updates and recipes it’s easy to keep in touch with what’s going on at the farm and make the most of food that’s grown with love and care for the environment. Farm events and wild camping also offer a chance to see where your food comes from and to learn new skills such as butchery or crafts such as flower arranging.

Okay, so they asked me to write their website for them, but I’ve been a customer and a fan for far longer.

Find G&S Organics on facebook
@gandsorganics

P.S. I wrote this on Sunday and set it to post today. In the intervening hours, the world lost an icon and I’ve lost one of my musical heroes. I’m sad today to have lost the genius of David Bowie, but forever grateful that he supplied a soundtrack of significant music for much of my life and influenced my writing in many, many ways.

← Previous 1 … 3 4 5 … 11 Next →

26 Steps part 3 – how constraints encourage creative thinking

26 Steps part 2 – walking in the landscape

Launching 26 Steps

Helping a new client find the right tone of voice

Listen

Observe

Research

Gather evidence

Guide

LA22 9SH a poetic postcode

The worlds within books

Going with the flow – how writing is like paddling down the Tyne

Taking a walk in her shoes

Walking, wandering, writing

Celebrating small businesses that make a big difference

Children of the Revolution

Riley’s Fish Shack

G&S Organics at Christmas Farm

Services

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