I love words - October 2023
Happy last-Thursday-of-the-month, everyone. Welcome to the October edition of I love words. Read on for a charity funding opportunity, Owlish, and Kafka. First…
At what point would you call yourself a writer?
I’m going to tell it to you straight: I will be annoyed with you if you ever refer to yourself as an ‘aspiring writer’.
Writing requires no permission or qualifications. To be a writer, all you have to do is write. To move from ‘aspiring writer’ to ‘writer’, write something. It’s as simple as that.
The main point of my irritation, however, is that the reluctance to call yourself a writer is getting in the way of your writing ambitions. By adding ‘aspiring’ to the descriptor, you’re diminishing yourself and putting yourself down. Don’t do that to yourself!
[Please note, this applies to non-writers, too. I will get annoyed with aspiring runners, artists, bird-watchers, bakers, flautists, and a whole host of other people who seek to engage in pursuits that have no entry requirements beyond making a commitment to yourself to do the thing you want to do. For more on this, head to page 47 of The Momentum Mindset: LINK
Also, I will concede that ‘aspiring’ is perfectly valid when talking about activities that require training or accreditation before you can get started, eg: people who are not yet fully qualified lawyers, brain surgeons, deep sea divers, bridge engineers and so on.]
I think a big part of the problem is that our identities are often so tied up with how we earn money. Yet they shouldn’t be. You can be a writer without being a professional writer. I’ve worked with a lot of actors and theatre-makers recently, and they rarely have this reluctance that writers seem to have. The work is unpredictable, and often poorly paid, so almost all will have other jobs that are unrelated to theatre. Yet they’ll introduce themselves as actors/directors/playwrights, etc.
Musicians happily do this, too. I know musicians who spend most of their working lives as stevedores, shop workers, or theme park employees, but meet them at a party and they won’t hesitate in saying ‘I’m a musician’. Perhaps it’s just the circles I move in, but writers seem to be more hesitant than other artists in this regard.
I don’t mind telling you, dear reader, that only a small part of my income is earned from activities that others might recognise as professional writing: articles, books, etc. Currently, almost all my income comes from working as a charity fundraiser. Yet I still call myself a writer. In part, that’s because my work for charities involves a lot of writing, but mostly because I do still sit down and write. My notebooks are full of ideas, article and book pitches, thoughts, drafts of this newsletter, some words that I’ll eventually get paid for, and scribblings that will only ever be seen by me. As long as I continue writing, whether it’s a lot of words or a few, I will be a writer.
Further reading
For someone else’s take on this, check out Anna Codrea-Rado’s thoughts. In a 2021 newsletter, revisited recently, Codrea-Rado wrote about how her self-identity has shifted. You can read the updated article here: I'm a writer now
Get your charity on the Ludlow platform
The Ludlow Trust company caused a stir in the charity world recently when they announced the opening of their new charity application gateway. Ludlow took on the trusts business of Coutts a little while ago, which included the management of a few hundred charitable trusts.
[For those who are not familiar with the world of charitable trusts, here’s a quick summary. Families or individuals looking for a tax efficient way to give to charity will put a chunk of their money in a charitable trust. This may be managed by a bank, accountant, lawyer, or similar appropriate professional who receives any fundraising applications, but the decisions on which charities receive donations will usually be made by the family or person who has provided the money.]
Previously, a charity that wanted to apply for funding from trusts managed by Coutts/Ludlow would have to apply to each of these trusts individually. With very little public information published on what each trust would fund, this could be a time-consuming, hit or miss activity with little chance of success. It wasted a lot of time, at all stages of the process.
The new system looks like it will be a massive improvement. Charities only need to register on Ludlow’s online platform once. Ludlow will then match the charity to the trusts who are most likely to be supportive. It’s early days, and I don’t yet know of anyone who has received funding through the platform, but if it works as promised it will save time and may even result in an increase in donations.
If your charity is not yet on the platform, you may want to get on it now: LINK
[I’ve got no professional relationship with Ludlow, so this is a recommendation based purely on what appears to be a potentially beneficial new system. As a freelance fundraiser, it would be remiss of me not to point out that I am available to help with the registration and application writing process. Just reply to this email and we can have a chat about it.]
Get some more words in your life!
Here’s my cultural recommendations for this month.
Owlish by Dorothy Tse
Let this book take your mind by the hand, and run with it. It will take you into a city that resembles Hong Kong, but with loose boundaries between the physical, the imagined, the real, and the dreamworld. It’s odd, but in the best possible way.
Owlish is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, translated by Natascha Bruce, and you can buy it here: LINK
Metamorphosis by Frantic Assembly
“My name is Gregor Samsa and I love fabric!” For a study in tension, check out Frantic Assembly’s production of Metamorphosis, touring now. Based on the novel by Franz Kafka, adapted by Lemn Sisay, and directed by Scott Graham, the play is captivating and incredibly well put together. The movement by the cast, especially Felipe Pacheco as Samsa, is perfect. It’s not a pleasant, fluffy experience, but I loved it.
See Metamorphosis on tour at Newcastle, Colchester, Salford, Guildford, Bristol, Coventry and Hammersmith: LINK
Sizwe Banzi is Dead
This isn’t a recommendation as such, as the tour has finished (unless you can get to Keswick before Saturday), but I had to give a shout out to this production, which I saw at MAST Mayflower Studios recently (thanks for the ticket, Alan!).
The play was written by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, and first premiered in Cape Town in 1972. Though apartheid and the society it depicts is no longer as it was, this new production deftly showed that racism persists across the world, and that bureaucracy remains a violent tool of oppression. Here’s the info: LINK
A thousand words
Weston Shore, double-exposure, on expired film.