I’ve been thinking for a while about the best way to get back into regularly reflecting on the work I’m doing, organising my thoughts across multiple strands of work, and capturing my learning or questions in all my areas of focus. I’m not sure this is the answer, but it’s what I’m going to try.
Taking inspiration from #weeknotes I’m going to do exactly that – post here once a week my reflections on the week just gone. The web of week notes describes itself as as being for the writer but shared, and that goes here too. Somewhat selfishly my primary purpose is to capture this for myself, but sharing in case of interest or use to others.
S01 E01 – week ending 28 January 2018
Digital
Had a great day on Friday working with Dan Slee and Comms2Point0 delivering an Essential Digital Skills for Comms workshop in London. I always find these events make me think about things differently, and curious about new or different things, as much as they allow me to share some of my experience and skills. This week I came away thinking about the details of GDPR, what place Reddit occupies in comparison to social networks like Facebook, how important being able to identify what action your comms efforts have caused, and on a personal practical level how I need to work on my public speaking! Looking forward to doing the workshop again in Leeds in a couple of weeks (book here) and seeing what thinking that session throws up for me.
Journalism and writing
A couple of email interviews this week for Storge – one with Antifolk legend Lach and one with jazz composer Christine Tobin. A few things Lach said really resonated with me – about how in any town no matter how hard things are culturally there are always a group of people doing vibrant things, and also that trying to define things destroys them. It made me grateful for the individuals and scene I’m lucky enough to be a part of and support in Derby, and remember that music and creativity is all magic. Christine Tobin too was a fascinating interviewee and I was personally hugely interested in her experience of setting poems to music (for why, see below). Reviews this week for Storge and Louder Than War magazine but still feel I’m running to keep up a little and not writing as much or for as many places as I wish I could (I really miss Echoes and Dust, and Get In Her Ears!). On the upside Storge is growing way faster than I could have hoped for and its been amazing to welcome so many new readers, work with new artists, and become stronger (and bigger) as an editorial team too.
Elsewhere I’ve been thinking again a lot about feminism and music journalism / gender in music based on some unfortunate views expressed on this in private groups, and also the Billboard Power List 100 news. I’m working through some deeper thinking on this rather than reactionary comments but summed up – pro-feminism is always preferable to faux feminism and that involves knowing where the line is on co-opting and unnecessary validation. I’ll probably write some essays / articles on this sort of thing, for somewhere, soonish.
Away from music I’ve finished a fresh edit of my first novel and am currently working through a new literary edit of the second novel. Production plans for the first are due to get picked up soon and I’m equal parts nervous and excited.
Music
I’ve been working more on lyrics for the upcoming SeiSui songs, adapting one of my poems, Arcadia, for setting to music. Expecting to focus more on this in the next couple of weeks to get the lyrics finalised and vocals recorded.
Misc
It was nearly nice that a couple of people at Fridays workshop took time to let me know my previous work and blogging (both here and on the Digital First blog at Nottinghamshire County Council) had been helpful to them in their work. Blogging has always been helpful to me but it was surprising and nice to hear it had benefitted others too.
What’s next?
This week is a heavyish week at Reckless Yes as we finalise production and PR details for our next two releases while at Boots UK we’ll be settling in to new desks amongst cracking through our to do list. I’m all about the productive and enlightening conversations at the moment and looking forward to some good development ones this week as well as getting my head down into some focus work. Two gigs coming up this week – looking forward to saying hello to Lach in person on Wednesday and then the sold out JAWS show on Friday, both covering for Storge.