Posts Tagged "Writing Workshop Link-up"

Writing Workshop – The girl and the jam jars

Posted by Josie on Oct 24, 2011 in Creative Writing, Writing, Writing Workshop | 7 comments

She sat in front of two jam jars, one smelling faintly of pickled onions and the other so old she couldn’t even remember what had been in it. With looped lines she wrote two labels and stuck them on, one on each: Missing and Found. And then she sat with the pen in the end of her mouth and thought hard.

With a sigh, it was easy to write the first one, her hand moving to fetch a slip of paper she had cut, writing in careful, neat capital letters, folding the paper to drop it into the Missing jar. Best to get that one out the way, and no need to dwell, was there really. Those thoughts had been thought before. She could bury it under other things missing, to help forget about it for a while. And after all, she doubted that particular aspect of her life would be missing for that long. “You’re just in there temporarily, okay?” she said aloud, reaching for another slip of paper. Right, what else was missing? She prodded the word in her head, but found it unbudging. Words sometimes like to take on the character of resistant old toads, she had found, so she shrugged, fair enough, we’ll come back to that one then.

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 – Permission Slip

Posted by Josie on Jun 13, 2011 in Me, Writing, Writing Workshop | 8 comments

Dear You,

You’re not feeling good tonight, are you? The kind of not-good Mood that has a habit of shuffling around after you most of the day, lurking just out of sight when you’ve turned to try and pin it down. It’s hidden itself in grey skies and sore limbs and a head that ached but you didn’t know why. And then, come evening, it’s pounced, grinning, gleeful, into your lap, all pointy elbows and sharp, digging little heels. Here I am, it said, surprise!

So, yes, you and your Mood, sat now in your bed, and it’s so wrapped up in you, you’re not sure where you end and it begins. And so begins that interminable wrestle for control.

Writing Workshop – Object Stories

Posted by Josie on Mar 10, 2011 in Writing, Writing Workshop | 0 comments

I haven’t done this for a while but I’m having to use my ‘Get Out of Workshop Free’ card today and not post an entry myself. I’m running a couple of dozen hours behind sleep this week (literally) and barely fit to write a shopping list let alone a coherent post.

Thanks everyone for taking part – I hope you enjoy reading and sharing your object stories.

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the Linky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) If you have the time it would be great if you could try and show your support to other participants by reading and commenting on at least two other entries.

If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve got another whole week to take part and enter your link so there’s plenty of time. Don’t forget that anyone can take part! Our next workshop will be in two week’s time, so I hope to see you back soon.