My writing journey

Given my recent award for a series of articles in Coaching at Work (links at the bottom of this post), I thought you might be interested in how I got here. How I got to being an award-winning writer. Gosh, that sounds grand. I need and want to own that – I am an award-winning writer! There, I said it twice. Blush. No Clare, stop blushing, own it! You have been practicing this skill for years, and you are good at it. No matter what your English teacher’s voice whispers in your ear.

At school, I was good at most things. Foreign languages were my main strength. But I distinctly remember being laughed at by my English class for describing heaven in terms of a sunbeam (which later, by the way, became my self-proclaimed moniker). I also remember my teacher telling me that my writing wasn’t descriptive enough. I had written about my family’s trip to Disney World and I think I must have written more about what we did rather than about the park and the people around me. I don’t think I quite grasped the meaning of descriptive writing back then. But it scarred me in a way. It stopped me from believing that I could write.

So I never saw myself as a writer….until I started to blog. That must have been some twenty-five plus years after my school flop. By then, I had written essays for Uni, reports for work and plenty of emails, and I loved letter writing. But I never saw myself as a creative writer….until I started to blog.

I love writing creatively. I love blogging. I’ve written before about what I have learned from blogging:

1. Letting go of perfection

When I first started to blog, I edited everything as if it were a document. Go back to those first few posts and you would see what I mean – they were much more formal than my writing style is now. These days, I type like I speak, and I hope that makes it more personable, rather than corporate.

I have noticed recently that I am an 80/20 proponent. Is it good enough? Yes? Then move on. Blogging has really helped me to solidify that. This really helps in all parts of my work. I am a human being and I am not perfect – I am 80/20 myself! Eighty percent “cooked” and 20 percent a work in progress.

2. Discovering my voice

I received some feedback in my leadership survey shortly before I started blogging. The person suggested that I should be more outspoken about my teachable point of view. Sharing it with others. Little did they know what they had unleashed!! The blog has really given me a vehicle to get clarity on my point of view and helped me to discover my voice – those things that are most important to me. Coaching and leadership. Coaching to support leaders to step up and take responsibility for developing their people, their key leverage. I could easily get on my soapbox about that….but that is not what this blog is about.

3. Discovering and developing a new talent

I love learning. But this creative writing thing did not come naturally to me. I wouldn’t say it was a steep learning curve, but it took some nerve to start with, to put my views out into the ether. But practice made perfect (or at least practice made 80/20!). Today, I am proud to say that I am a blogger, a writer, an author. My years of practice led to me writing plenty of articles in Coaching at Work, Coaching World, Coaching Today, Action Learning: Research and Practice, Strategic HR Review (see just some of them below if you are interested in exploring my teachable point of view further), five books (five – I impress myself, though I will say that two are self-published, two are digital, two will be published in 2022, but once again, own it Clare!) and close to a thousand blog posts.

So I wag my finger at my English teacher and say, “naaaah, nah, nah, naaaah, nah”. I can write. I do write. I am a writer. I am an award-winning writer, no less! Yes, I keep blowing that trumpet, but I am proud and I want my writing to be read. What is it all for, if not to be read?

4. Understanding myself

Well, in fact, it is also for me to get clearer on my point of view. I learn huge amounts about what I believe by putting my thoughts down in writing. My head is full of nuggets that become useful to me and my clients once I have unpacked them in writing.

Writing is a skill, and just like any other, it takes practice. If you want to become a writer, my biggest tip is just to write. Don’t worry about writing for someone else or for a book. Just write. Sooner or later, you will have built your writing muscle AND you will have lots of great content – for blogs, for articles, for a book. And find a book writing group if a book is your thing (even if you don’t know what book to write, but know you have one in you). The group I belong to is hosted by Sue Richardson (for free!) and is so motivating.

Here’s my back (and future) catalogue:

Award-winning articles in Coaching at Work:

• Charging point
• For what it’s worth
• Fees – Time to step up

Other Coaching at Work articles:

• Kings College London – Study Aids, Case Study
• Supervision – Locked-In
• Supervision – Stay Sharp and Safe

Articles in Coaching World:

• Mentor Coaching is for Life, not just credentialing
• The Virtues of Virtual Coaching
• How Action Learning can support a Coaching Culture in Organisations

Article in Coaching Today:

Sharpening our edges: the benefits of mentor coaching (July 2020: page 26)

Article in People Management:

How to make a coaching relationship work

Books:

• Mentor Coaching: A Practical Guide
• Being a Sunbeam
• Seeing Beyond the Blind-spots
• New digital book to be published by Bookboon in early 2022: Hybrid Leadership
• New book to be published in September 2022: UnLearning to Coach (working title) – Sign up here to receive a notification when it’s published.

Book chapters:

101 Coaching Supervision Techniques, Approaches Enquiries and Experiments