angela@poachedcreative

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye...

2009-10-01T06:14:00.000-07:00

Today I finally got my certificate for completing the twelve-week Poached Creative Writing and Communications training programme. Today is also my very last day (at least for now) with Poached Creative.

It's been five months since Jess, Jeevan and I sat in a meeting room in Wood Green library for our first session. I'm sitting here trying to think of everything that has happened since I started. Six writing & comms trainees and two design trainees have walked through the doors of Poached, which conjures up images of walking through dry ice pre-transformation on Stars in Their Eyes, only without Matthew Kelly.

Chris Warburton is currently loving his work experience for What's Up Information (read his blog here). And...(drumroll please)... I got the voluntary position with Save the Children!

It's been a couple of weeks since it was confirmed that I had indeed got the job. I had thought that I would be doing an on-the-job training internship: picking up skills from working alongside professionals who would coach me further in writing and communications. This doesn't seem to be the case with Save the Children: they want me for my expertise! During the interview, I had to demonstrate that I increased visitor numbers to a website, so I cited my Dad's website and the use of Twitter as an example.

I'm looking forward to starting but I'm also a bit apprehensive: Am I up to the job? Will they like me? Will I somehow find a way to screw this up for myself? Once I've got the first day out of the way, I'm sure I'll be fine. I've had lots of encouragement from family and friends and they believe in me, even if I sometimes don't!

Onwards and upwards then...

A first...

2009-08-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

It was a very productive weekend, all told. On Saturday, my parents and brother came over to talk about the website we're currently developing which is due to launch in open beta in October. During the meeting, Jess gave me a call to tell me about a volunteering opportunity with Save the Children.

The role was to work on the digital media side of the Campaign to End Child Poverty in the UK. Trouble is, Jess said, that the application had to be sent online by midnight on Sunday. I thought I'd check it out and see whether it would be right for me: as it didn't specifically call for a writer as such I was keen to know what the day-to-day responsibilities would be. I saw that the job required blog writing and an awareness of social networking among other things.

I couldn't get started on the application right away as we'd arranged to go to a friend's gig and stay at their place in north London. We got back early afternoon on Sunday and I got straight to work. I knew my CV needed to be amended as I hadn't looked at it - let alone updated it - since April this year shortly after my employability course with Reed in Partnership. I was really conscious that it shouldn't run over two pages without needing a magnifying glass to read the tiny font. I spent a long time on making it just right for the application, but whilst doing it, I was able to appreciate how much I had achieved since I was last employed. I have clients! Sure, they're not paying clients but one day there will be clients that pay me for my work. I've got back into radio after an absence of six years and it's been really good fun!

Once the CV was done I moved on to the application. I expected it to be quite challenging, but to be honest, it was mostly straightforward. Filling in personal details and the equal opportunities bits was easy. I just had to remember what I learned in the employability course on how to write a good application. I went through the essential skills part of the job description and related them to previous experience that I'd gained in past employment. It took some time to think of the right examples but I was pleased with the end result.

I submitted it 20 minutes before the deadline, which was an achievement in itself. It dawned on me just after I'd finished that I hadn't applied for a job in over a year. A couple of years ago, I'd got so sick of looking around for another job and signed with countless agents for jobs that offered very little in terms of my personal satisfaction. My heart wasn't really in being a PA at all. Now I'm going for jobs that will give me great experience in terms of my future career as a writer. And that's really exciting!

On trichotillomania

2009-08-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

When Jess and I spoke a few weeks back to review my 12 weeks at Poached, we discussed my writing an article on an issue that is not so well-known in the UK. Trichotillomania is an affliction that affects a small percentage of the population, but has a wider implications for a person's mental health. It is the act of pulling out one's own hair to either relieve stress, or something one idly does whilst watching the TV or reading a book.

I showed signs of tricholtillomania in my late teens. I started to rub my eyebrow hair with my sleeve and found it satisfying when the hairs gathered on my wrist. Soon afterwards, I took to pulling them out with the ends of my fingernails. I would be sitting in front of the TV and before I knew it, I had amassed a little pile of hairs on the end of the remote control. As I began to do it more frequently, the signs were more obvious. There was a picture of me on the mantelpiece of my grandparents' house taken on my 18th birthday and the evidence is there. I'm sure barely anyone else would give it a second look, but I'm always drawn to the outline of my eyebrows whenever I look at it. I hadn't really put the two habits together until recently, but I tend to bite out the hair on the front of my fingers too.

In trichotillomania - or 'trich' - terms, eyebrow pulling is quite common. I suppose in one sense I am lucky because I can use make-up to disguise it. However, many people pull hairs out of their scalp, and those who have done it a lot are often afflicted with bald patches. Some 'pullers' tend to pull out the hair from their armpits or their pubic area. In many cases, pullers are ashamed of their affliction: both punishing themselves for their lack of control over a mindless habit, and feeling embarrassed and self-conscious of their bald patches.

I have done some research into trich and have found that there are many resources available in the US for those who want to overcome this problem. There are some online resources available, such as self-help from an ex-hair puller and forums for people to discuss issues associated with trich. The UK is catching up, albeit slowly. My theory is that people who are afflicted have no idea their problem has a name. I only found out what it was called in the last five years - 10 years or so since I first started pulling my hair. Once people know the name, the internet is there with plenty of information. TV programmes such as Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies have a brief guide as to what it is. Although the NHS has a section on Obsessive Compulsive Behaviour (trich exists on the spectrum of OCD), there isn't anything specific on trich.

My next step is to construct an article and arrange some telephone interviews with others affected by trich and with a medical specialist. Right now, I think the main focus is getting more awareness for the term trichotillomania as I'm sure there are many people out there who have no idea how to define their problem. As Jess suggested, getting an article like this into a women's or health magazine could give the cause some much needed exposure.

"I CAN'T!"

2009-07-21T07:33:00.000-07:00

This blog entry has been a week in the making. I have sat on the sofa with the laptop perched on my lap trying to eke out something - anything - to write.

The past month or so has been eventful, in good and bad ways. The bad stuff is easier to deal with now, but I'm still acutely aware of it and it's still quite painful. The good stuff serves as a distraction from the bad stuff, but it's only a temporary fix. For example, I went to my first weekend festival the other week and got over my fear of camping. I had a great time and met up with a couple of old friends. However, I drank enough cider to give me heartburn and was still suffering the after-effects three days after getting back. If I were to make an equation it would go:
a = 1.5b
where a = 1 drinking day and b = recovery day.
Think I've been watching too much Big Bang Theory.

I know it's the nature of life to have good and bad things happen, but the bad things are much more difficult to cope with when you're suffering from depression. And far from giving me a new lease of life, recovering from the fun stuff knocks the stuffing out of me - I barely have enough energy to rise above normality, let alone the bad things.

All this has exacerbated my depression over the last few weeks. It affects my relationships and my ability to do normal things that most people take for granted. It affects my social life. It affects my confidence. It affects my motivation. It affects my concentration.

My depression gives rise to overwhelmingly negative feelings. Just today, I paused to think about what I had to do today, only to have the thoughts drowned out by a screaming in my head: "I CAN'T! I CAN'T! I CAN'T!". Other negative thoughts flow in quick succession - I'm a burden; I can't understand why or how anyone could love me; I'm crap at everything I do so what's the point?

Even things I normally have enthusiasm for, like writing, either don't seem as pleasurable or I get a crisis of confidence, thinking that the outcome is going to be rubbish. For me, writing takes focus, which is something I sorely lack when I'm at a low ebb. Needless to say, this frame of mind, along with the aforementioned negativity, does little to increase productivity.

What's frustrating is that I have a few writing assignments to do, which I would cheerily throw myself into if I was my normal self. Now, on top struggling with the need to motivate myself to do the work, I feel guilty that I've promised things to people that I'm finding very hard to deliver.

It's made me question whether I still want to do this for a living, but I'm pretty sure that's a voice coming from the negative part of my brain. All I know is that I need to do more to aid my recovery. I'm sure then everything won't seem so bleak.

To be or not to be ... self-employed?

2009-05-27T04:20:00.000-07:00

I feel as though I'm working full-time at the moment. If I haven't got stuff to do for Poached, then I'm collating information for a music archive website, or I'm preparing items to include in a radio show. Things are getting busy.

Yesterday was the first day I got to spend some quality time with my laptop, the tool that's going to help make my working life easier. I got a flavour of what my day would be like if I was a professional writer and I really enjoyed it!

Working from home seems to give me so much freedom. Yes, I've got to be disciplined in terms of the time I devote to other things during a working day and be careful not to get distracted. But I sat on the sofa surrounded by my work and I was happy.

I really enjoyed the session we had with Saba last week when we talked about feature writing. If I'm honest, I was as interested in finding out about how she finds being self-employed as I was about how to go about researching and structuring a feature.

What worries me is how I can make a steady living out of writing. I know cash flow won't be consistent. I have rent and bills to pay, and if I come off benefits, suddenly there's no safety net. I'm quite adamant that I'm not going back to doing admin again. It was only ever meant to be a stepping stone into doing something more with my creative skills. I'm due to have a meeting with Reed in Partnership to have a chat about my options. I have lots of thoughts going round my head. Should I work part-time and get a guaranteed income? If so, should I do work that will give me more writing experience, or perhaps build on the voluntary experience I have through hospital radio?

What to do?!

Precious time

2009-05-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

We're 6 weeks in and so much has happened in that short space of time.

Jeevan has had a baby...and I'm the proud mother of a bouncing baby laptop! It's exciting! I have a PC at home but it's over 3 years old now, which is positively geriatric in computer terms. The laptop's very pretty and girly - from the metallic rose finish to the Swarovski crystals on the lid. I don't go in for bling that much but the laptop itself has a great spec, so why not?

Jess and I had our review the other week which went really well. I've been pleased with the work I've done so far, but I'm aware there's always room for improvement.

One of the things we talked about was that a week seemed such a short time between sessions. My self-employed fiance often says that he didn't know how he found the time to do half the things he does now when he worked full-time. And it's true! Days just disappear under last night's washing up or visits to help parents understand Twitter. And then there's all these thoughts about the things you're letting slip, like the gym or date nights.

I know I've got to be more disciplined about my work and setting fixed times in the week to do it. Thinking it and doing it, though - there's the challenge!

Take today for example: a day I'd thoroughly intended would be productive on the writing front. I had a moderate lie-in (10.30am). C and I drink coffee and promise ourselves 'just one more game' on Big Brain Academy on the Wii. Of course, 90 minutes later and we're still trying to turn silver medals to gold. I had resolved to go for a run. C and I get dressed and walk briskly to the park. After a couple of laps of jogging, we take a detour to PC World to look at laptops. C hits upon a plan where I can get the laptop I tried buying last Friday, but couldn't as the store didn't accept credit cards. After brunch, ablutions and some banking transfers, we head off to the store - a 45 minute bus ride - to pick up the laptop. Ten minutes later, with laptop in hand, we head home on another bus. At this point, it's 5pm and I could see my intentions of getting work done at all today just ebbing away. I couldn't just turn the new laptop on and get on with it. Oh no. There were all sorts of updates and installations and countless reboots before it was anywhere near ready to go. Three and a half hours are spent doing diagnostics and ordering curry. Then it's time for Ashes to Ashes, nine o'clock, BBC1. It's the penultimate one - exciting stuff. Get back to the laptop and the internet is infuriatingly slow. It's only when I move into the bedroom and nearer the router that it all starts to work as a new laptop should.

I know 10.45pm isn't the best time to start work, and I don't intend to carry on for much longer as I need my beauty sleep. However, if I'm going to take my writing seriously then I need to make time for it and not be distracted by other things...like life!

Ups and downs...

2009-05-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my strange week! After riding high for a while, I had a couple of bad days. Friday was the worst as I barely got out of bed. On Tuesday I was just exhausted and had little energy or motivation to do anything, although I did manage a short walk and a shorter-than-usual stint at hospital radio.

All this has impacted on my work for Poached this week...

'My Altoids are changing and I'm okay with that'

We had a great session with Chris last week on how designers and writers work together. He took us through some creative concepts for an ad campaign, a magazine and a direct mail piece. Although I've worked in advertising before, it was good to get an insight into how the idea germinates and becomes, say, a poster or a radio ad.

All of the concepts that Chris took us through were good examples of putting the audience first. The Wrigley's ad was quirky and fun. It was designed to attract interest from a new audience, but the brand was still identifiable to existing customers. The magazine for the orchestra, again, had to retain its core audience by using a classic style, but also engage with new, younger fans who would value the more contemporary content.

A light grilling

That afternoon, we concentrated on interview techniques. We'd touched on this during the second week when Jeevan and I found out more about each other to write on our blog profiles. I found then that I enjoyed asking the questions much more than answering them. Jess ran through some really good tips, like making notes of keywords whilst recording an interview so it's easy to refer back to a particular section.

A part of me thinks I would be a good interviewer as I'd like to think I'm good with putting people at their ease and the conversation would flow freely. On the other hand, the other part of me thinks I might panic under the sheer weight of information given to me and I'd want to make sure I got it right.

I remembered that I had watched Frost/Nixon recently. It's an amazing film that I recommend to anyone. Not only is it compelling, but also you see David Frost honing his interviewing craft to gain his reputation as someone who can hold his own in the big league of political interviewers.

Jess set us the task of setting up an interview for a case study that will feature on the NHS Careers website. We had a couple of practice runs that went fairly well, but I'm not 100% confident of doing a good job. I did volunteer to call Jeevan at the weekend for us to go through an interview, but even the days inbetween Freaky Friday and Gloomy Tuesday were pretty grim for me.

Down, down, down...

All of which brings me back to the start of my entry. With regard to my depression in the past, if I've found something difficult, I've tended to hide or run away from it. After that comes the self-flagellation that I'm no good at seeing things through, everything's a struggle and I'll never get anywhere. I experienced some of that this week. I was behind with some of my work. Even now, I've yet to write my blog for Week 3 and there's always more stuff I can do on the charity website. The best solution was to actually tackle a bit of it, but the Nike-esque ethos of Just Do It was beyond me.

So here I am, up late the night before, trying to redress the balance of hardly doing any work over the last week. I know I shouldn't beat myself up about it but I'd be happier going in tomorrow with some work done. And you'll be pleased to know that I have no intention of giving this up!

Jeevan versus the volcano

2009-05-07T06:18:00.001-07:00

Here we are at Week 2 of the training, and I’m finding myself conscious of what I’m writing and where to put that information. Why am I starting this blog entry with this paragraph? Why not the next? Hello? Are you still there?!

Today we learnt about the five principles of effective writing: Clear, Concise, Accurate, Relevant and Timely (I’m finding myself self-editing as I write this!). We also learnt how we go about achieving those principles, through grammar, context and style.

Cut and paste

Jess took a story out of the Guardian and showed us how the first sentence of a story is meant to engage the reader into wanting to find out more. Jeevan and I had a go at assembling the separate sentences of the story into what we thought the order was. We were pretty close but I think we were leading more with the human angle than with facts, which were actually pretty dramatic (it was about an oil tanker rescuing a couple who’d been stuck in the water for 40 days after their yacht was damaged). It was an interesting exercise. Although I’ve worked for a newspaper, I’d never really given much thought to the structure of a news story.

We then went through 10 tips for effective writing. The first was ‘Put your audience first’. I suppose it’s something I’ve done before when writing, but not consciously. I don’t really think I’m writing to anyone in particular when I’m writing in my journal, for instance. I was interested in Jeevan’s point of view as a songwriter: whether he writes with someone in mind or whether he gets swept away in expressing himself though music.

Interviews: Getting to know you...

I very much enjoyed our task for the afternoon session. Jeevan and I had to write each other’s profiles for use on the Poached website. We started out with a few basic questions to get the conversation going (I can’t seem to get ‘Getting To Know You’ from ‘The King And I’ out of my head now!). It was a great opportunity to get to know Jeevan and find out about his upbringing in Montserrat. I know we were focusing on interview techniques more in later sessions, but I felt more comfortable asking the questions than answering them. I suppose it’s for other people to decide what’s interesting about you, but that said I wouldn’t want to bore anyone with endless unnecessary detail! Taking what we had learnt about each other, we had to write the profiles in a way that would engage our blog characters. I had great fun working with the imagery and words of the volcanoes that Jeevan grew up around and I was really pleased with the end result.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever taken writing seriously, certainly not since school or university anyway. The amount of planning that has to go into an effective piece of writing is something I haven’t had to consider for a while. I remember it used to take me ages to write an essay but then I would be constantly referring back to my books and study guides.

Linkage and further reading / viewing

Jess brought along a load of reference books for us. I want to learn more about writing effectively so I ‘googled’ some phrases and found this link. Another useful source I found was this.

Jess covered similar topics last week, but the paragraph on clichés was worth noting for future reference. I also liked the paragraph on self-editing found in the link.

Finally, for a guide to writing for TV drama, comedy or soaps, Charlie Brooker from the Guardian made an excellent special episode of his show Screenwipe. Although it deals with writing for TV, some of the advice in the show could be carried into basic principles of writing.

The episode is on YouTube in five parts:

PS I moved a couple of paragraphs around. Can you tell which ones?

Twitter and poodles - an introduction to writing and communications training

2009-04-30T02:16:00.000-07:00

First day of my writing and communications training today and it’s gone really well! Slight culture shock getting up so early having not been a 9-to-5er for a while but I’ll get used to it soon enough.

Jess introduced me to Jeevan, who’s also doing the training, so it was just the three of us all morning. This made it quite relaxed and informal. Jeevan seems like a really cool guy. We’ve both been involved with radio but our writing experiences are different (he’s a songwriter).

It’s a long time since I was in Uni studying Media Arts so when we came to learn the basics of communications, although some of it was common sense, I have to say I did struggle getting my brain into gear after all this time!

The basic principle of communication is relaying a message to an audience. The ways you can communicate are both verbal and non-verbal. Non-verbal could be an image or using body language whereas verbal could mean spoken or written word. When you get to the written word, you can’t always get immediate feedback and you can’t judge the context of what is said using body language or other non-verbal signs. I guess that’s why so many people when using MSN or something similar use ‘smileys’ to give extra information (and maybe emotion?) with what they’re saying.

Tweet, tweet

We started talking about the web and how it has given us so many different ways for people to communicate – email, MSN and social networking sites like Facebook. You can share photos on Flickr. You can share your thoughts on a blog on LiveJournal and you can even micro-blog on sites like Twitter.

For about 5 minutes, I was the designated Twitter expert! I showed Jess and Jeevan the basics and how different people use it. You can keep in touch with friends but it’s also used as a marketing tool, so if you’re ‘following’ NME on Twitter they will ‘tweet’ you with gig news and album releases.

We also talked about being sensitive to your audience. I did a bit of this when I worked for an advertising agency – making up a profile of the customer who is most likely to go and buy a particular product. I guess we take advantage of the fact that we communicate in different ways with different people: you’d talk differently to your two year-old niece than you would to your boss (at least I’d hope you would!) so it’s not just a case of how we communicate to sell things.

So this is the first of my weekly blogs. It’s good practice actually as I’d got out of the habit of writing, plus I’d never thought to target my ramblings at anyone before!

Time for the assignment...

Later on, Jess and I began talking about the website copy we’ll be working on – a charity working with people who have suffered human rights violations. This is an actual real assignment. I have to confess I’m both nervous and excited at the same time! We went over the current copy and discussed what we could do with the text on the site at the moment. There’s a bit of tidying up to do – very long pieces of text and a couple of inconsistencies – but it’s great to have so much information to hand already. I’ll do a bit of research myself and see whether there are any charities offering the therapeutic community approach.

If there’s one word for how this makes me feel, it’s empowered. I know at the end of this I’ll look at the work produced and feel proud that I’ve seen it through. It’s flattering that someone has the confidence in me to carry out this project.

Crazy poodles

This week’s task was to find a piece of communication that has made me think or that’s struck me in some way. C showed me this weird poodle aerobics clip on YouTube so I’d have to go with that, even though it’s one of the more bizarre things I’ve seen recently!

After seeing the clip I was tempted to look up the story behind it. Well, it’s not every day you see biped poodles on an exercise video! It reminded me of music videos and performances by Goldfrapp.

Her dancers wear bikinis and prosthetic wolves’ heads when on stage. The ‘sexiness’ of the dancers is compromised by the scary headgear. Is it that they’re actually meant to be wolves but have donned a human costume, or is it vice-versa? The poodle clip looks cute, fluffy and de-sexualised compared with the infamous Eric Prydz music video for Call On Me.

Motivation

But back to the training, the last thing we did was go over a training and development plan. Jess and I had already talked about the sort of things that I wanted to get out of the Poached ‘experience’ but also as this is Jess’ pilot of the scheme, we’ll both be learning from this.

The goals we set up were both personal and professional. For instance, we touched on my depression and I mentioned that motivation is sometimes difficult for me, so that’s going to be assessed on an ongoing basis. I felt comfortable talking to Jess about this. Sometimes you can find people who don’t fully understand what depression does to you and it’s a bit embarrassing, but I had no problems talking about it today. I’m really looking forward to learning more writing and editing skills too. That last sentence makes it sound like doing the writing and communications training is by the by, but it really isn’t!

I went home feeling like I’d accomplished something and I was getting somewhere with my long-term goal of being a freelance writer. Yay!