Welcome back to A Writing Life, and to the fifth of six guest articles from long-time 26 member Anita Holford. Each month, we invite her to share stories from her writing life, reflecting on what it means to live as a writer today.
On the first Saturday of May, I joined the procession winding down Monmouth’s high street for the Wye Valley River Festival. Artists, locals and community groups coming together, marching with models and puppets and signs they’ve made for the festival (a tree-man, a bee, a river, a murmuration of starlings interspersed with poetry).
And there, moving gracefully through the crowd, was the Goddess of the Wye. A giant puppet, who carries a lot of meaning for people here. I first ‘met’ her two years ago, and have come across her at a number of community events here ever since. I always watch her with a lump in my throat. There’s something deeply moving about her gentle face, and the way her keeper (art activist Kim Kaos) moves with her. It’s particularly because of what she represents: our beautiful river, which we humans have failed to look after.
A timely moment – creating our stories
It felt especially meaningful this year. Just days earlier, the Goddess had stood outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, alongside more than 4,500 campaigners, as the UK’s largest environmental pollution claim began its first hearing.
I live in Monmouth, where the River Wye meets the rivers Monnow and Trothy. In the early hours of one morning last November, Storm Claudia caused the Monnow to swell to 18 times its normal level, and floodwater coursed down our high street. Shops, businesses, homes and our community centre were filled with fast-moving floodwater, and the situation was declared a major incident. You may have seen the distressing scenes on the national news. Monmouth still hasn’t recovered: many shops remain closed, and some people still haven’t returned to their homes.
What has this got to do with my writing work?
I’ve been thinking about all of this since reading Ben Edge’s book (see last month). Ben writes about folk traditions as a way for communities to reclaim their stories – their creativity, rituals, and sense of who they are – especially in the face of more powerful forces. I’ve realised that what folk traditions do for communities, perhaps we, as 26 members, do for organisations – finding the words for who they are and who they’re becoming.
All of this has been timely, as I’ve been working on a rebrand for one of my longest-standing clients: an international development agency working in water and sanitation, and beyond. There’s about to be a new name, and a new language to go with it. A new way of saying who they are and what they stand for, at a moment when the world feels turbulent and the stakes incredibly high. And not surprisingly, water runs through it.
The writing itself has involved developing key messages, drafting sample stories, biographies, and boilerplate copy; providing storytelling and writing guidance; and working with the brand book.
If you’ve done rebrand work, you’ll know the challenges and the thrills: writing for people who know their work far better than you ever will; retaining an authentic voice while pushing the tone of voice to reflect the aspiration; and making decisions alone at your desk about which word, sentence, or phrase will spark the reader the most. It’s intensely collaborative, and at times pretty lonely too.
This project has pushed me as a writer. John Simmons talks about how every writer operates somewhere on a spectrum of ‘We, Me, Them, It’. With this rebrand, I’ve needed to inhabit the ‘It’ – the organisation, the brand, the vision – and silence the ‘Me’ far more than I have before.
I’m writing for leaders across Africa and Asia – from scientists to policy-makers – and attempting to do justice to their expertise and authority while making the language more human. I’m learning about practices that are as much about global politics as they are about science. And I’ve spent hours searching for words to express an organisational future that’s aspirational, not yet real.
What about my own creativity?
Aspirational and not yet real seems true of my own creativity too. In April I told you about the tab I hadn’t managed to open very often – the free-range imagination and creativity with no deadline, client or brief. I was hoping that by the time I reached May’s column, I’d have more to tell you about this. But I guess I’m still circling it. Most of what I’ve described in this column has been purposeful. Even this column is purposeful. I wanted to explore my creative self, yet I’ve been spending five months writing about wanting to write for myself!
But what this column has done is to help me think about and pay more attention to my own creativity. It’s encouraged me to continue seeking out opportunities to test it, express it, and find joy in it. It’ll come. I guess a river doesn’t know where it’s going either, it just keeps moving.
– Anita Holford
If you’d like to know more about Anita’s writing life, explore her website or connect on LinkedIn.