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Writing Workshop: One Year – On me, Cybermummy and Blogging

Posted by Josie on Jun 27, 2011 in Blogging, Charity Organisations and Awareness Raising, Me, Save the Children, Writing, Writing Workshop | 47 comments

This is the bracelet I wore to Cybermummy this weekend. In case you don’t recognise the symbol, it’s a Save the Children one, and on the back is engraved “Every Child Born To Shine”.

I lay in my hotel room the following morning, ribs aching from laughing, heart aching from unexpected feeling, and head a little numb from thinking, and rubbed the red token with my thumb in the sunshine coming through the blind. And I thought back on the last year.

Thinking about last year’s Cybermummy I suddenly realised how much I’d changed, and how much those changes have affected the way I approach and experience things. Not just things like Cybermummy, everything really, but comparing myself at the two events really hit home.

Last year’s saw me full of self-doubt, feeling like I had something to prove, feeling like I needed to convince everyone that I had something to say that was worth listening – brands as well as people. In a room full of mostly strangers I felt small. Standing up to deliver my talk about blogging and authenticity and voice as part of the main panel session, something I had anxiously worried over long before-hand, I felt like a fraud, like I didn’t deserve to be there and I worried that everyone else thought it, too. This meant I tried a bit too hard, I think. It certainly meant I worried more, a bundle of self-concious nerves with a slightly forced face of confidence and a ‘I belong here’ attitude to try and convince myself.

But by the end of the weekend I wasn’t in a room full of strangers any more, and my voice had reached people that I never would have expected, prompting an email a couple of weeks later from Save the Children and the beginning of that amazing journey and all the changes that followed.

Writing Workshop #11 – Voices in your head & false assumptions

Posted by Josie on Jan 25, 2010 in Writing, Writing Prompts | 15 comments

Welcome to Monday’s Writing Workshop prompts! There’s going to be a slightly different format this week as I’ve decided to give you all an extra day to respond to the prompts. Our workshop will now be held on a THURSDAY so I, umm, I mean you all have a bit of extra time to write. What do you reckon? Good idea?

For any newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works… I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to have fun with it!

Prompts each week will take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.

So here they are:

1. Tell me about a time where you refused to compromise. What was it about? Do you regret your decision?
- Inspired by Jo at Slummy Single Mummy and her post: ‘The sacrifices you make as a parent – and the ones you won’t…’

2. What do people always wrongly assume about you? Time to set the record straight people!!!
- Inspired by Bare-Naked Mummy’s fab post on why, unequivocally, DEFINITELY Welsh people are NOT posh!

3. What have the voices in your head been saying lately? Write a conversation with yourself.
- Inspired by Manic Mummy’s blog post: ‘Is it me, or…’

4. Your prompt is ‘Together’. Share a scene or write something that encapsulates this feeling for you.
- Inspired by Noble Savage’s beautiful post: ‘Sunday Mothering’

5. What exciting job would you like to do for a day?
- Inspired by my poetical musings this week.

Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and THURSDAY. On Thursday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please.

Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Thursday’s round-up.

Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:

Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.

See you Thursday then!

P.S. And if you fancy plugging this workshop on the social network of your choice? Then that would be fan-frigging-tastic.

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This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.