Thursday 16th May, 2024

Doing something weekly

When you do certain thinks weekly, you get a real sense of the passing of time. At least that’s what happens to me each time I sit down to write this newsletter. There are other things I do weekly too, of course but I get less of a sense of time passing with those. This is probably because a newsletter like this forces me to think about what I’ve done over the past seven days and sometimes it feels like I haven’t done much at all. This week was disrupted in a positive way. I had a couple of family celebrations involving overnight visitors and a meal out in a restaurant. This ate into my work time but I’d planned for the down time so it wasn’t stressful. Now I’m thinking I ought o plan for downtime every week because it’s a good way to get everything done and still take extra time off. I’m wondering how other people go about writing their regular newsletters, blog posts or similar.

Do you plan what to write? Do you write them in one sitting? Do you redraft and edit?

I have a ‘newsletter sticky note’ on my desk and I jot down things that occur to me to include. Then, when it’s time to write, I just sit down and do it all in one go. I don’t plan and I rarely edit. Hence the typos. There’s a good reason for this. I love being able to just write without an editor telling me to change things or a publisher asking for specifics. I feel like a child who’s been told they can have anything they want for tea.

Dictionaries

This week I’ve been thinking about dictionaries after three unrelated but coincidental occurrences.

One was a conversation with a teacher who got in touch to ask me if I knew what they could do with a pile of dictionaries they had and no longer needed. I gave her a few ideas for donating them and I think it’s all been sorted now.

The second was a book I came across as I was looking for a different book. You might know it. It’s called ‘Dictionaries’ and it’s a resource book for teachers written by Jon Wright (series editor Alan Maley). It’s one of the Oxford Resource books. I pulled it from the shelf and saw it had a load of post-it notes sticking out from various pages. I think I must have done a teacher training session on dictionary activities at some point.

The third was a reference to ‘bilingualized dictionaries’ that I read in a LI post by Geoff Jordan Jordan. The post is called ‘Notes on vocabulary learning’. You can read it here. But the thing is, I’d never heard of these dictionaries. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole afterwards. A bilingualized dictionary is based on a monolingual dictionary. It has the usual definitions and examples but then it has translations in another language. How I wish I’d had one of these when I was learning Spanish. There’s always been an argument about whether bilingual or monolingual dictionaries are best for language learners. With a bilingualized dictionary you get the best of both.

Did YOU know about these dictionaries?

Writing work

This week has been productive despite the down time. I’ve written a second draft of a graded reader and several blog posts. I’ve also planned in brief two teacher training videos that I’ve been asked to record. I haven’t looked at them in close detail yet as we are still in discussions and nothing is definite but I decided to get ahead a bit. I especially wanted to think of a structure I could follow that would work for a whole series. I’ve had some guidance about these videos from my son who happened to be here. He’s a video editor and producer and we had the opportunity to sit down and go through a sort of step-by-step ‘video-making for dummies’. It was very useful. I then purchased a new microphone (not expensive) online and arranged to borrow some equipment (spotlights and a background screen) from him at the weekend. More on this next week, I’m sure.

Less screen time

I’ve decided to try and reduce the amount of screen time I have. This isn’t easy for obvious reasons. Getting hooked on a book helped. It meant I went to bed and read a few nights this week instead of watching something on my iPad. I finished the book. It was called ‘The North Light’ by Hideo Yokoyama. It’s a kind of mystery book about someone who has disappeared but really it’s about art and architecture and creativity. It was right up my street.

I’m also reading ‘Just my Type’, a book about fonts by Simon Garfield. I get mixed reactions when I mention or show it to anyone. They either yawn or get excited. I like it because it’s basically a really interesting book of stories about how different fonts came into being. It’s given me lots to think about.

Being a freelance writer

This week I’ve paused to remember to be grateful for the freelancing lifestyle I have. I’ve been able to drop work when there was a pause in the rain to go out and weed my flower garden! It’s so much easier when the soil is wet. I’ve also been able to start planning a short break in June around my birthday, regardless of what day of the week this falls on and with no need to ask permission from anyone first.

But I’ve also witnessed a downside of freelancing this week. Another freelance materials writer has been having problems getting paid for work that’s done and dusted. I won’t go into detail. It isn’t my story to share. But it is something that happens to freelancers from time to time and it can make us feel vulnerable. I don’t have the answers but I think it’s worth mentioning the fact that it isn’t always a bed of roses.

CPD opportunities

A final thought this week which was prompted by a post on LinkedIn by Melissa Thomson , a friend and fellow materials writer. She was preparing for a panel event and asked the question,

‘What's been the one stand-out CPD experience you've ever had?’

?I love that question and I love the responses she got. You can read the thread here.

How would YOU answer it?

Thank you for reading, as always. I’ll look forward to your questions, and comments, and answers.

Kath

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