My week in (ELT) writing

A week in the life of an ELT materials writer – 23 Aug 2023

This is the second of my new weekly newsletters. When I published the first one, a week ago, I wondered whether it was really the kind of thing that people might be interested in reading. Just now I checked back to see if LinkedIn had any analytics for me, and was surprised (and very chuffed) to see that I have 3,055 subscribers. Thank you! That’s given me a boost as I sit down to write week 2.

This week has been busy but we’ve had a heatwave (it’s 45o in the north of Spain today) so I’ve been kind to myself too, finding ways to stay cool and not pushing myself when I feel tired but instead understanding that this a symptom of the heat and I’d do better to rest and pick up speed when things cool down. Over the past couple of years I’ve learnt to be a much better boss to myself. The main lesson I’ve learnt is that being a workaholic is not a good thing, and that by prioritising rest, exercise and relaxation, I’m actually more productive in my writing work.

So this is what I’ve been doing this week:

Skills Book

Last week I mentioned the lovely ‘Language through Literature’ project I’m working on. This week I’m working on the same project but I’ve been working on an accompanying Skills book. One of my tasks is to write clear grammar explanations which children understand. Some grammar points are easy to explain but some are less so, and can cause a few headaches. When I’m up against a tricky one, I use all my power of imagination to beam myself back into one of my own primary classes, with a real context. I remind myself of how carefully I need to choose the words I use to explain a complicated concept, about which diagrams or highlighting will help to get the message across. I try to predict the questions that might arise from my explanation, so that I can go back and tweak the text to make things clearer. It can be time-consuming but it’s very important to get it right. The end is in sight for this project now and I’m asking myself if I’ll be mentioning it at all in next week’s newsletter. In the chat-chat part of my emails with an editor this week I learn that while I’m in the throes of a heatwave here, my colleagues and co-workers are in Monsoon season and report heat, intense rain and the odd cyclone.

Project pages

I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to take on a very small project for one of my favourite UK Publishers who I’ve worked a lot with in the past. It’s only a couple of days’ work and has to be finished by the end of the work. I’m doing an hour here and an hour there. As most people who work on multiple simultaneous projects know, a change really is as good a rest sometimes. This work is fun and quite creative as it’s all about writing manuscripts for model projects. ‘What’s that’? I hear you say. Basically, each unit of a primary coursebook has a project. I didn’t write the projects but they’re perfect: i.e. ‘doable without too much fuss’. What I’m writing are sample ‘answers’ if you like: examples of finished results which the children can use as models. It’s tapping into the creative part of me that loves playing around with coloured pens, scissors, card and glue. There are two main reasons why I’m doing this work. 1. I like working with the Commissioning Editor/ Project Manager and 2. I’m going to spend the extra money (it won’t be much) on something ‘special’. I don’t know ‘what’ yet, but maybe something like a weekend spa trip – that’s occurred to me right this second, as I write.

More video scripts and proof-reading songs

When I mentioned the fact that I’d been writing video scripts last week, I didn’t mention the fact that my husband is writing songs for the same project. He’s ‘the song man’ for lots of ELT projects for children, not just his own books and courses but often for other writers’ courses too. This week he’s been writing songs and I’ve been checking them over. We usually read through each other’s work, especially when we are working as joint authors. We don’t mind pointing out flaws or saying thing like, ‘This sounds a bit boring, to be honest’. We’d never use those words with other writers, of course. But between us there is ‘confianza’, as they say in Spain.

Other bits and bobs

I think this will be a regular sub-heading as my life consists of a large number of other bits and bobs! This week I’ve been organising! First was my folders and documents on my computer. That was cathartic! I’ve also been de-cluttering my email folders. I’ve done this over a couple of evenings, sitting on the sofa and using my phone. Oh, the joy of deleting thousands of old emails with a single click! Years ago I attended a webinar that Dorothy Zemach gave about being organised and I learnt lots of useful things from here. One was to go through your emails, sorting them so that the oldest appears at the top instead of the most recent, and then just going down and deleting all the stuff that you’ll never ever need again.

Besides the organising, there have been emails, a plan for an article called ‘Ten ways writing classroom materials can make you a better teacher’, a blog post for CUP blog about the skills teachers need to develop to become a materials writer and an almost finished blog post for our ‘A to Z of writing ELT materials ’ series on ‘H’. Can you guess what the H is for?

Kanban board and calendar

This needs a sub-heading of its own as it’s such a big deal. I’ve been organising my work and my commitments for the coming months. I’m a huge fan of the Kanban system which I learnt from Rachael Roberts . I set a Kanban board up on the back of my study door a couple of years ago but I’d abandoned it recently. Last night I set it all up again and I already feel the peace of mind which it brings. If you’ve heard of it and use it, you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t, look it up! It might change your life.

At the same time I’ve been filling in a new paper calendar that I made myself when I couldn’t find one that worked perfectly for my needs. I’ll stick it on the wall under the Kanban board later. I’m colour-coding my entries so I can see busy times at a glance, or times when I need to be in a certain place at a certain time – like for the live Zoom sessions for our Writing ELT Materials course. I’m also colouring in my favourite colour – GREEN – days which I’m designating as holidays, days of rest, ‘me’ days, to make sure that they happen! Do you schedule in ‘me’ time?

That’s it for this week. Back to work now. I took a chunk of time off at midday so I will probably be working until quite late this evening.

Thanks for reading,

Kath