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Names Are Important

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Picture Credit: AI Last week I had a great time working with a terrific bunch of folk from the NHS hoping to become accredited workplace mediators. To deeply embed the learning, the six-day course ended with three days of assessed role-play where they could practice their skills before being let loose on proper cases. It’s an excellent way to learn, and despite initial nerves, it wasn’t long before they embodied whatever part they’d taken on. I saw some Oscar-winning performances! One of the essential parts was the aggrieved employee, and it was fascinating to observe the real-life learning they got from mock scenarios. A particular learning point was how important it is to remember people’s names. When a mediator got the name of the aggrieved party wrong several times, they got the full force of their feelings.. . ‘you don’t care about me... you don’t even know my name.’ Names are important, and it’s a thread I follow in ‘A Sense of Identity’, the recent novel I’ve started writing. ...
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Understanding Outcome over Effort

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 In the world of professional sport in particular, much is made of the effort needed to achieve even a moderate amount of success. An old adage goes that when the records are examined in future years, very rarely does anybody remember who came second. In some ways this is a reflection on life itself. In 1 Corinthians 9: 24,  St Paul who knew a thing or two about outcome and effort wrote the following,  "Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it."   Image Credit: Pinterest.com  In verses 25-26 he goes further,  "Athletes exercise self-control in all things: they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air." As writers we all have our own way of doing things regardless of the genre with which we choose to express ourselves and to our intended audiences. Are we the disciplined kind lik...
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Remember Your Why by Lesley Crawford

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  As a writer, it’s easy to become discouraged.       Maybe the book sales or blog views aren’t what we hoped for. Maybe negative feedback has knocked our confidence. Or maybe we’re simply tired.       It can be just as easy to feel discouraged as a Christian.       We face difficult circumstances, prayers seem to go unanswered, and the joy or peace we once knew feels distant. Pressure and opposition creep in, and we start to question everything.       In both writing and faith, discouragement whispers the same question: Is this still worth it?        I’ve asked myself that many times, and I’ve learned that moments like these invite us to pause and remember our “why”:       Why did we start, and what were we hoping to achieve?        Why did we begin writing, and why did we choose to follow Jesus? Both were intentional decisions. ...
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Seasons of transition by Elaine Langford

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    January is often seen as a transitioning month, named after Janus, the Roman God who looks back at what has been and forward at where we want to be. We often use it as a time to focus on chang ing our habits or perceptions of ourselves . I joked in my previous ACW More Than Writers (MTW) post, Less is More - Giving up Flabby Writing , January could be seen as a month to give things up. Have you given up on your New Year ambitions yet? February brings its own period of transition as we start Lent on the 18th February this year . Lent is a time of waiting, like Advent, as we take time to look towards Easter. It ’ s common to giv e up luxuries so we can spend more time in prayer and reflection . Though in this age, it can be an excuse to stuff yourself with pancakes and fillings first.   Advent  through to Easter can be the coldest months, where we long for Spring and Summer. These times of waiting for celebrations and looking to a new future can some...
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Winter Reflections

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  It’s appropriate that I’ve been asked to be the reserve blogger for the end of January. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions in general –   I tend to have a list of ongoing goals that aren’t calendar specific. Instead, I loosely consider January a month for reflection, resisting (sometimes fighting) the urge to make any new commitments. This year, my month of reflection has looked very different from normal. The end of December was a flurry of activity, rearranging flights last minute to hop over to Princeton, New Jersey on Boxing Day to help my daughter and son-in-law after the birth of their first child (and our first grandchild!), who arrived a little earlier than anticipated. Being trusted to be with them at such a vulnerable and special time was a privilege, but – I have to be honest – I worked extremely hard. In between being the housekeeper, errand girl and assistant nanny, I was also trying to keep up with my actual paid job (which is not my writing) part-time....
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Stacking Up, by Maressa Mortimer

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  The hardest parts of any job are the tasks that aren’t the actual job. I had a wonderful, healing time writing Sapphire Beach, but what do you do when you get to The End? Turns out, the rest of writing a story is more complex than just telling a story! Parts of the process I really enjoy, like making the cover. Other parts, like marketing and making yourself known I enjoy but find them time consuming at the same time. Building a website is a fiddly job and involves a lot of nitty gritty details. I also have one of those pullup banners, which is a fiddle to set up without losing fingers, but looks good once it’s up. The problem with both banner and website is the upkeep of it. The banner is now out of date, as I have another book published since I ordered it. My website is in desperate need of an overhaul, which is time consuming and needs my full attention, even if it’s for an hour. I also have a podcast, which was rather ambitious and made me very nervous. I did enjoy it, al...
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Pressing On Towards The End of the Longest Month Ever by Allison Symes

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Image Credits:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. If you haven’t read Mnemonic by the wonderful Brian Bilston, I highly recommend it. It is his take on what seems to be the longest month - January. I guess it doesn’t help we’re still well into winter, the evenings still draw in much earlier than we’d like, and there is less natural light around (though things will be getting better on that front by the time this post goes out).   So we press on towards the fact even January must end and spring will come. It is a matter of time. Hands up, anyone who finds it easy to be patient. I’m not raising my hands, by the way.  But pressing on and being patient are crucial parts of both our Christian lives and our writing ones. I know. Logically, with time, we should be getting better at both, right? We’ve got all of that experience of our spiritual lives and writing ones under our belt, right?  Hmm… I am very much a work in progress on both fronts, but I find th...
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