It’s not hard to see why.
Even before the untimely death of Robin Williams in 2014, his portrayal of English teacher, John Keating’s unconventional approach to teaching at an elite boys’ boarding school was profoundly moving, inspiring and uplifting. Since Robin Williams’ suicide, the words seem to have an even greater poignancy.
Stripping away certainties
I have been hearing them growing louder inside my own head over the last few years. Maybe it’s a natural consequence of being in my 50s and feeling my own mortality. Maybe it’s something to do with the ending of my marriage, the loss of my home and the personal breakdown I experienced two years ago.
The world as a whole has become a more troubling place in recent years and, coupled with my own stripping away of certainties, I find myself in a strange and unfamiliar place, raw from struggle and fear, living in a way that I didn’t expect to be living and ready for positive change.
Urgings of the heart
Two months ago I was suddenly inspired to act on the urgings of my heart. Ever since I was a child myself, I have wanted to write for children but for one reason or another, life has got in the way. I have been busy earning a living, bringing up my daughter, getting into debt, getting out of debt and getting into debt again…. Despite the longing to write a children’s novel I have never succeeded in writing more than a plot outline, a couple of chapters and the occasional poem.
A couple of months ago, I heard them talking on radio 4 about the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia and I began to wonder if studying for an MA might be a way to break the deadlock. UEA’s MA was already full for this year but I figured that an MA specifically aimed at aspiring children’s writers might be the best option for me anyway. I asked a friend, who is a published children’s author, which MA he would recommend. Bath Spa University’s MA in Writing for Children and Young People, he told me, is the most highly regarded of all the MAs for aspiring children’s writers.
I decided to apply, figuring that if I start at the top I can always work down. I began my online application in May and immediately received an email urging me, politely, to get a move on as the course was nearly full.
I was hurtling through the application until I reached the section that asked for a personal statement. I have never written one of these before (such things didn’t exist when I applied to do my BA Hons back in the 1980s) and I wasn’t even quite sure what one was. After consulting Google and reading what a personal statement should look like I began thinking “OK, so why do I want to write for children?”
Hardwired for story
The answer to that question is this: I have always been fascinating by storytelling. In his book The Science of Storytelling, Will Store describes our brains as “the ultimate storyteller”.
We tell one another stories all the time – in our conversations, in our news, in our religions, in our morality, in the way we educate our children… And our brains tell us stories too – in our dreams and daydreams and in the very way we interpret and make sense of the world.
We are hardwired for stories and some of the best stories, in my opinion, are those that are written for children. Often these are the stories that are most imaginative, the most creative, the most compelling and exciting. I admire the way children’s authors create imaginary worlds, depict believable characters (even if they are non-humans), write realistic dialogue and use every tool in the storyteller’s toolkit to produce dynamic, fast-paced plots that make you want to keep reading. I would love to be able to do that and that is why I want to do an MA.
In my work as The Café Copywriter, I tell stories all the time, albeit in an organisational context and with a particular objective in mind. Some years ago I created a website called Uplifting Stories and was fascinated by the power of real-life stories to inspire and motivate. I observed how the very process of retelling their own life story seemed to have a therapeutic benefit for the teller as well as captivating the listener. I trained as a clinical hypnotherapist, which is another form of storytelling aimed directly at the subconscious mind, and saw how this type of storytelling can produce profound and lasting change.
The power to change the world
Storytelling is within us. It goes back to the oral traditions of our distant ancestors, predating written language. It is fundamental to our understanding of the world and our place in it. I’ve seen how story has the power to change the world in the way that mere narrative cannot. When I am writing about change (and the need for change) in the NHS, for example, it is always the telling of patient stories that has the greatest impact. As much as you can try and persuade people to change the way they do things, it is often the story of patients being harmed by the way things happen now that succeeds in changing behaviours.
The internal storyteller
Over the next two years (starting in September) I am looking forward to learning from some of the greatest children’s authors more about the subtle art and science of storytelling. I am noticing that my unhelpful internal storyteller is already starting to weave scenarios in which I turn up for tutorials only to find I am the only one who can’t do it and, unable to quite meet my eye, the tutors tell me it might be best for me to leave.
Every now and again, though, another less familiar storyteller presents a magical picture of the vast sleeping dragon of my imagination waking up, blinking a bleary eye, stretching its aching wings and starting to fly, stiffly at first but with increasing grace and ease, across a star-strewn sky towards a destination as yet unknown.
I have been a writer all of my life and I have made my living this way since I was 21. It is a great way to earn a living and I have no complaints.
An imaginator, however, is something different, it is someone who imagines. Like all of us, I imagine things day in day out, but often what I imagine is not particularly helpful or encouraging. I am hoping that this course might help me to harness the power of my imagination to create something wonderful that inspires not only me but possibly also generations of children to come. That would be a deeply worthwhile way to spend the rest of my life.
I will be blogging about my experience of becoming a children’s writer and you can follow my progress on here. Like you, I have no idea how this story ends so if you would like to join me in its unfolding, you can sign up to make sure you don’t miss anything. Coming along for the ride…?
I’m currently crowdfunding to help me support myself while I study for the MA. If you would like to donate you can find my page here. Thank you!
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As part of the preparation to become a TED speaker, I received coaching from an experienced TED speaker coach called Danielle Krage
If you ever need coaching, I can’t recommend her highly enough. Here are my top 5 tips based on my recent TED journey:
1. TED speakers talk without notes or autocues for between 8 and 15 minutes. I created a visual talk map to help me remember my talk. It is easier for our brains to remember images than words and the associations between the different images helped me to remember the flow of my talk. Even the process of choosing the photos and sticking them on a piece of paper helped to commit them to memory
2. Talk as though you are speaking to the one person who really needs to hear what you have got to say.
3. Imagine your talk as a conversation with the audience. Make a point and then imagine what they would ask. Then respond.
4. Practise and keep practising. I recorded my talk on my phone and talked along with it every time I was in the car, the shower, cooking tea…
5. Smile, breathe, allow your shoulders to relax. Trust it will be OK
I was reminded forcibly this month of why storytelling is such a powerful medium for business as I began editing an online happiness programme. It talked about our desire to “be approved of”.
Being part of a tribe was vital for our ancestors’ very survival. Our innate desire to fit in and be approved of harks back to our very earliest times when exclusion from the tribe might make us more vulnerable to attack or injury or illness. One of the ways earliest man communicated and formed bonds with others in the tribe was by storytelling. The very earliest evidence of human existence is in the form of cave paintings, depicting stories of everyday life.
These days, of course, our survival is rarely threatened but our instinct to tell stories persists. As businesses, if we fail to tell stories… relating to our work, our passion, what we do… we are missing a trick.
I recently wrote a piece in Business Matters about the importance of organisational storytelling, and how to do it. In case you missed it, click here to read it again.
]]>Once upon a time… stories were something that began with once upon a time. They were mostly for children. Or for entertainment.
But then a few years ago, businesses began to cotton on to the power of stories.
Simon Sinek in his great TED talk How Great Leaders Inspire Action talked about how businesses that are adept at articulating their purpose – why they exist, what they believe in – appeal directly to the limbic part of our brain, which is the part that controls decision-making and behaviour. He cited Apple as an example, explaining that Apple doesn’t talk about its computers or try to convince us that they are good or have great features. Instead they talk about the fact that they believe in challenging the status quo and doing things differently. And, on this basis, people are happy to buy computers from them, phones from them, even watches from them because we share the same ethos.
Great leaders today need to be great storytellers. These are the leaders who inspire us to follow them because we want to not because we have to because there is a sign on their door that says Chief, Head or Director. These types of leaders inspire their staff to go the extra mile for them and organisations with this type of leadership ethos engender loyalty and commitment from their end users.
Whatever the nature of your business or organisation, telling stories will enable you to connect with end users in a way that appeals straight to the “feeling” part of the brain – the part that makes decisions. It will articulate your beliefs and values in a way that engenders greater connection and loyalty amongst staff and end users. And it will shift your narrative from the dry language of business to the richer language of common humanity and shared purpose.
I have helped some of the largest organisations in the UK to tell their stories and I believe there are a number of key components that make a truly great business story. This is my storytelling top 10:
- Start with the message – what do you want people to take away from your story? Keep these aims and objectives in mind, although don’t allow them to dictate how you tell the story.
- Stand in the reader’s shoes – what sort of things are important/interesting to them? What do they want to know about? A good business story balances what you want end users to know against what they want to know about – the things that interest and inspire Make sure you talk in their language and not yours.
- Be honest – share your challenges and difficulties as well as your successes. Demonstrating how you overcame challenges is a great learning point for others. Tell them what lessons you learned. Being honest makes you appear authentic and accessible. Remember the Brene Brown TED talk about The Power of Vulnerability.
- Set the context – tell readers about the problem or difficulty you were aiming to tackle at the outset. When they really understand the context, it makes what you did appear very much more powerful.
- Include a call to action – before you tell your story, think about what action (if any) you want the reader to take after reading it. Do you want to inspire them to contact you to find out more about your work or becoming a partner? Or, would you like them to read more about what you do? Include details of how they can take action.
- Start at the end – when you’re telling a story you don’t have to tell it in chronological order. Often it can be better to start at the end (the amazing outcome) and work backwards (how we got there). Or, you may want to start by setting out what the problem was. If you have a really great quote, you might want to start your story with that. Mix it up a bit and vary it so your stories don’t appear formulaic.
- Interest, inform, inspire – this is a good principle to bear in mind when you are writing anything but particularly a story. If it doesn’t have all of these components, people are unlikely to read it and even less likely to take the action you want them to take.
- Finish with a flourish – some stories just stop and there is a frustrating lack of completion for the reader. A good way to end the story is to look forward to the future – what are you going to do next? How will you build on what you have already done? Or, you could refer back to the original problem/challenge and emphasis how much things have changed. It is often good to end on a positive note.
- A picture is worth a thousand words – OK, this isn’t strictly true but it is good to have a picture to accompany your story, particularly if it is a genuine picture featuring the people who were involved, rather than a stock shot. Remember to caption the picture with people’s names.
- Make it simple clear and professional – why are you telling the story? If you don’t know how can you expect your reader to know? Make sure your message is clear. Use simple, accessible language without being patronising. Check your spelling, grammar and, most importantly, make sure you spell people’s names correctly and give them the correct job title.
Most businesses and organisations have a wealth of wonderful untold stories.
Uncovering this rich seam of gold can strengthen your organisation by illustrating the difference you make and showcasing your values and beliefs in action. Stories allow you to share best practice and inspire others through the work you are doing. On a practical level, they provide an important source of new content for websites, social media and trade or consumer articles.
In business, stories don’t start with Once Upon a Time but they can grip the imagination like the archetypal fairytales of old and you can convey a powerful message that will inspire readers in a way that plain old marketing copy can never hope to do.
Click here to sign up for Cafe Copywriter news, writing tips, workshops and online courses.
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Click here to sign up for Cafe Copywriter news, writing tips, workshops and online courses.
The Nursing Times is renowned for its authoritative double-blind peer-reviewed articles. This month, I co-authored a 3,500-word feature about a groundbreaking commissioning project with life-saving potential. The process of researching and writing the article was lengthy and exacting but the final piece does justice to the project’s significance as a pioneering initiative with global implications. Click here to read the article.
One of the things that makes my job as a writer particularly worthwhile is being able to make a difference through my writing and there can be no greater satisfaction than writing to save lives. Around 100,000 deaths in NHS hospitals annually are linked to Acute Kidney Injury and nearly a third (30%) of these deaths are believed to be preventable. AKI is a global healthcare challenge.
Think Kidneys is a national programme from the UK Renal Registry, set up to raise awareness of the condition and save lives. I was appointed to help capture best practice stories and articles. The Nursing Times article charts the journey of a pilot project in Southern Derbyshire that wanted to create new ways of commissioning services in order to cut the number of cases of preventable AKI. It sets out the context for the project, the improvement journey, the rationale for involving nurses in the project, the challenges and impacts of the work.
.If you have got a story to tell, whether it’s a major innovation project or a smaller news article, I’d be happy to help you tell it. Click here to get in touch.
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6 Essential Actions to Improve Unscheduled Care is a flagship programme from the Scottish Government, created to help NHS Scotland tackle problems associated with emergency care. I work with the Scottish Government as a case study writer, helping to capture some of this amazing improvement work, spread best practice and encourage NHS organisations to learn from one another.
I have spent years writing case studies for businesses large and small and the process always begins with a detailed telephone interview. I speak to the teams involved and ask them to tell me why they embarked on the improvement process; what challenges they faced and how they overcame them, what changes they made and the impact these changes have had. We talk about what they learned along the way, what they might do differently next time and what factors have contributed to their success. I interview frontline staff, improvement teams, Chief Operating Officers, consultants, nurses, patients and anyone else who contributed to the process or has been impacted by it.
Next, I bring all of this information together in the form of a lively, informative and inspirational case study. Each one tells a compelling improvement story and provides a blueprint for other organisations to learn from. They are packed with different insights, perspectives and approaches that can be scaled up across the NHS.
The benefit of using case studies
For the organisations themselves, there is something hugely rewarding in seeing their hard work recognised and presented in the form of a written case study, while for organisations facing similar challenges, it is inspiring to read how others have turned things around and achieved positive results. The Scottish Government benefits by being able to demonstrate that its improvement processes make a real difference to those on the frontline. And for the NHS as a whole, there are huge efficiencies to be gained in organisations learning from those who have been there and done it.
6 Essential Actions to Improve Unscheduled Care
Towards the end of May, I flew to Edinburgh from Devon for the 6 Essential Actions team’s twice-yearly Winter review and planning event. It was attended by the great and the good of NHS Scotland. Programme lead, Helen Maitland spoke about the importance of case studies in spreading good practice, while Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, Shona Robison MSP announced a further £9 million of funding for the 6 Essential Actions programme
I am genuinely thrilled to be involved in such a worthwhile initiative and to be playing my part in encouraging system-wide spread of ideas that improve the experience of patients and staff. Click here to read one of the case studies.
If you would like me to help you to capture and share your own improvement stories, click here to contact me.
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As well as writing for large organisations, I write for pleasure, for my own personal interest and growth. Last summer I began writing a blog called Dress to Express. Over the months it attracted an enthusiastic following and less than a year on, in a quite extraordinary twist, it led to me becoming a TED speaker. The talk will soon be available on YouTube. In the meantime you can read more about it here…
I say this was an extraordinary twist because the blog was something I created entirely for myself to help me get through difficult times. There was no endgame, no plan to use it as a jumping off point into something else. The fact that a blog about private and personal struggles has catapulted me into a very public spotlight seems more than a little ironic.
It was a scary and strange thing to leave behind the solitary seclusion of the café and step onto a stage in front of a live and online audience. Despite appearances to the contrary, I am naturally quite shy and often have difficulty speaking out in front of people, even small groups of people. However, I have never been one to shy away from a challenge or give in to fear so I did the talk in spite of my fear… and I have been overawed by the response.
Dress to Express began as an exploration of my personal relationship with clothes, charting a particularly challenging period of my life. During this time, I noticed that I was using my clothes – somewhat quirky and self-expressive as they are – to support me and bolster my confidence. What began as a simple record of the clothes I was wearing grew into an exploration of my personal challenges and our complex relationship with clothes as humans.
The theme of TEDx Totnes 2017 was Change Drives us Forward. The organisers liked what I was saying because, although on the face of it, the talk was about clothes, of course it was about much more. It covered themes such as freedom, prejudice and self-expression.
If you know anything about TED, you will know that it is not easy to become a TED speaker. You have to be invited to speak and the selection process is a rigorous programme of meetings, conversations, writing and refining. It took approximately six months. There were around 50 hopefuls for 12 speaking slots. At the end of this, my talk was accepted and next began the process of transforming myself from someone who was too afraid to speak out at team meetings into a confident TED speaker, able to step out onto a stage without notes or autocues and give a 15-minute talk. I wrote a blog about this process, which you can read here.
Thanks to an unfailing belief in me by my friends and the TED organisers, some amazing coaching by TED speaker coach Danielle Krage and my own determination to say what I wanted to say and not to be beaten by fear, I did it. I stepped out onto the round red carpet at 2.20pm on Friday May 12 and delivered a talk called What Toddlers Teach Us About Style.
My TED talk will soon be available on YouTube. I will publish a link to it in my next newsletter. It was an extraordinary journey and I suspect it is just the start of another. Already I have been approached to speak again on the same topic.
If you are interested in hiring me as a speaker on the topics of personal freedom, self-expression and growth or if you would like me to write a speech for you, please get in touch.
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Once upon a time… stories were something that began with once upon a time. They were mostly for children. Or for entertainment.
But then a few years ago, businesses began to cotton on to the power of stories…
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All of which is fine if you’re someone with plenty of time on your hands but how many of us fit that description?!
Put simply, a social media strategy helps you to understand WHY you’re using social media. Once you’re really clear about this you can put together a plan which will set out WHAT you are going to do.
So, where to start…?
In creating your strategy, it can be helpful to ask yourself these questions:
- Who are we?
- What are we doing (and who for)?
- Why are we doing it – what are our short-term, medium-term and long-term aims?
- What are our values?
- What image do we want to put across?
- Why does the world need us?
The answers to these questions will give you a really clear jumping off point. They will determine what to say (content) and how to say it (tone of voice). Once you’ve got this straight, your social media content will be clear and consistent, whether it is created by one person or 10.
Neither your strategy nor your plan needs to be complicated, in fact the simpler the better. In our workshops we advocate summarising your plan on the back of a postcard. Taking the time to work out your strategy at the beginning and using this to devise your plan will mean you always know what to post… today, tomorrow, next week, next month.
If your destination was the South of France, you wouldn’t head North on the A1 and wonder why it was taking so long to get there! It’s the same with social media. Be clear about where you’re going and you’ll be surprised how much easier it is to get there.
Oh, and remember to have lots of fun along the way.
For more tips about social media, come along to our Writing for Social Media workshop. Click here for details.
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It was one of a collection of hundreds of sad, shocking and terrible images from Aleppo. It was a photograph of a child, probably about six or seven, lying dead on a street, his foot at a weird angle, his leg obviously broken. What struck me so powerfully about this photograph was the fact that the child was dressed up against the cold as you would expect any child to be at this time of year. He (she?) was wearing a coat and a hat and gloves. The poignancy of the fact that he was wrapped up warm against the cold, presumably by loving family, was in stark contrast to the fact that he was lying dead and alone on a street. I can only imagine the pain of loss and grief endured by his parents and the terror that drove them to run from his body. For me, this image alone encapsulates the agony of loss when the object of our love is gone from us. It was played out again a few days ago in the images from Berlin – the sickening contrast of families enjoying a Christmas market turned, within moments, into a scene of unimaginable pain and torment.
I feel particularly attuned to loss right now and, as we know, once one is attuned to something we see it everywhere around us. I met up with a friend this week whose wife is dying of cancer. She is in the final months of her life. He spoke of knowing that the love he has for her will transcend the loss of her physical being, that this love will still be there long beyond the time that her body has perished. I could feel this love flowing from him as I held his hand. I wanted to put my arms around him and make it alright and, of course, I can’t. This is the deal we make with the universe when we choose to love. In return for the exquisite joy and connection of love, we accept the unbearable pain and grief of loss. There really is no way around it unless we choose is to build a wall around our hearts and not really love anyone or anything. I’ve known one or two people like that, who opt out of the pain game but it seems to me they live shadow lives, grey and rather meaningless.
As you may or may not know, I am dealing with my own sense of loss right now. It is nothing on the scale of the examples above but, nevertheless, it is raw and it hurts. The man I loved chose to be with someone else rather than with me and is, in effect, gone from my life. He ended our relationship in a brutal way and now won’t see me or speak to me. The grief of this is as raw now as it was five months ago when he made his choice. To all intents and purposes, he is dead to me and I miss him being in my life. Coping with this loss is a day by day challenge and there seems to be no guidebook I can follow. Every day I am making it up afresh. Some friends have suggested that the best way of getting over the loss is to allow the love I still have for him to turn to hate. If I could detest this man and see him as a worthless individual, I would feel grateful that he is gone from my life. I can see the logic of that and sometimes I can access these feelings but mostly I can’t. In truth, I don’t really want to hate him. I would rather continue to feel the love even though it is now accompanied by pain and grief and a knowing that it is not reciprocated.
I wonder sometimes, what happens to all of this love when the object of our love is gone from us? Where does it go? Does anyone benefit from it or does it just float away like pollen on a breeze?
When our love is focused on an individual or individuals, they experience it as warmth, connection and care for their wellbeing – like little boy in Syria dressed in warm clothes to keep out the cold – but when that person is gone from us, there is no outlet for our love. When there is no loved one there to receive it, maybe all of this love goes into a kind of collective pot that anyone can access at any time if they choose to. If that is the case and you are alone right now or lacking love from your life, I hope you can find a way to tune into the collective love of humanity. Maybe more than ever right now, we need to wrap the collective love of humanity around ourselves like a blanket to keep out the cold of winter and the chilling evidence of so much inhumanity in the world.
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