The hardest part of writing is writing 🖋

Oh, and thinking of stuff to write about 💭

Jul 15, 2020

Good morning all,

I always forget the pleasantries in favour of diving right into whatever is on my mind that week, but today I wanted to say hello - and welcome, if this is your first issue of Conversations By The Sea. I’ll pop a list of recent past issues at the bottom should you want to waste some time this fine Wednesday.

I have always loved writing, although I never expected to make it my career. One of my first memories of enjoying writing was in middle school French, where we were asked to write a review of our favourite french film (in English). Along with being a passionate writer and nerdy linguist, I was also an avid cinephile so this was pretty much my dream task. One of the few homework tasks I actually bothered myself to do, I excitedly typed up a review of 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté). I’m sure you can imagine my disgust when the homework piece came back with the comments:

“Good review but in future can you write it in your own words”.

Instead of recognising that I might actually be not-too-shabby at this whole writing thing, the teacher accused me of lifting my review from the internet… I did not. I might still be a little bitter, can you tell?

Anyway, that didn’t stop me from going onto to study French and Spanish at university, as languages were always my favourite subject and made perfect sense to me (unlike maths and science, ew). I spent three years struggling through chronic anxiety and barely grasping the subjunctive tense. I even dropped out of my year abroad because I was suffering from dreadful homesickness (I’ve just realised that last week I promised this issue would be about failure, and yet here I am failing to write about it. Maybe next week).

I graduated with a solid 2:1, not bad considering I didn’t spend actually speaking French or Spanish in their native countries and developed a strange habit of watching The Office US and living on only chips. I didn’t really get a 2:1, though. I got 2:2s in most of my speaking exams (due to my lack of practice) and firsts in my culture and dissertation modules - the ones where I wrote in English about topics that interested me the most.

I even picked up an award for the highest graded dissertation in the Spanish department, a medal of honour I hope the subject of my Magnum Opus, Che Guevara, would be proud of.

Instead of recognising a passion for writing and pursuing a career then, I freaked out at the prospect of leaving the world of education and enrolled on a MA in Translation, of which I only completed half (more on that in the failure piece) as I was offered a job at a local business news website. And so then started my writing career.

We “wrote” 8-10 articles per day, I say, “wrote” because it was mostly rehashing press releases. But, if I did the skivvy work quick enough, I would have some time at the end of the day to write about whatever I wanted, as long as it was relevant to an SME audience. I wrote about Tesco’s fall from grace, the rise of Bitcoin and other strangely prophetic topics.

On evenings, I was eating free food in Newcastle’s hottest restaurants thanks to my mildly successful food blog, Tyne and Dine. Although my career has since moved on and I’ve dabbled in many different types of writing, including PR, social media management, content management and general digital marketing content, the act of writing is still (and will always be) my favourite activity.

Although I am a fulltime writer, I write copy and content marketing materials for clients - so it’s not quite the same as dithering on in my own Guardian column (I wish).

I guess that’s why I started Conversations By The Sea in the first place. Here I can write about whatever I want (typically in the realms of freelancing, mental health and marketing), and it doesn’t matter if it is “engaging” or contains “relevant CTAs”.

It is just a collection of (mostly) unedited words that I hold myself accountable for sending out every Wednesday at 8.30 am. This self-set deadline forces me to write about something anything. And as all writers know, it’s the writing that’s the hard part (oh, and thinking of what to write about.)

If you love writing as much as I do, I want to read your musings. You’ll find me on Twitter @ContentByTheSea.

As usual, this is the part where I share the non-work-related stuff I have been enjoying this week. Reading-wise, I didn’t finish any books this week as I’m back on the epic fantasy hype after my foray into contemporary last week. Hopefully, by next Wednesday I’ll have a mini-review of Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker for you (looking like a 5* read right now at just-over half-way through). I just increased my 2020 reading goal from 25 to 50 because lockdown has presented significantly more reading opportunities than I thought. Don’t forget you can follow me on Goodreads here.

Other than books, I am also enjoying continuing to grow my stationery collection. I typically buy everything from Amazon, but I recently stumbled upon Under the Rowan Trees, a North East independent stationer who stocks all my favourite brands (Sakura, Zebra, Tombow). So now I can satisfy my stationery addiction and call it “supporting local businesses”.

That’s all from me this week! Here’s a cute photo of Potter and Harmony on a playdate with fellow Northumberland Greyhound Rescue pup, Sylvia.

ellenkforster