the not-so-secret diary of a copywriter: on finding the motivation to write

Whether you write for a living or not, it’s all too easy to fall into a slump when it comes to writing your own content – things like social media posts, blog posts (hello!) and emails.

I realised a while back that I’d fallen ground to a halt in terms of writing anything to market myself. It all felt a bit too work-y, a bit boring and too much like everyone was shouting the same things into an echo-chambery void (AKA LinkedIn).

But then I found a way to drag myself out of that ditch, and I started working away behind the scenes to make it happen.

The answer was StoryGnat – my new Substack. And the beauty of it is that it has absolutely nothing to do with copywriting.

Instead, each week I tell my readers about a story I find interesting. It might be a true story (fair warning, I did history at uni). It might be a fictional story. It might be a mix of the two or a muddle of things. I don’t usually tell the story itself. I tell you why you might like it, why it grabbed my interest – and I point you in the direction of where you can explore it for yourselves.

That’s the idea, anyway. Because I think when we consume more stories, our lives become richer, our perspectives on our world become broader and our empathy for those we share the world with becomes deeper. (Or to put it another way, stories are fab.)

And why StoryGnat? Well, I love stories and I have the attention span of a gnat, so it kinda fits. The stories jump around from topic to topic each week, so my gnatty brain is out in full force.

Writing for StoryGnat felt easy, and that’s helped me find a way back to writing about work stuff, too – so you can expect to see more from me about brand voice and copy over the coming months… on here, on LinkedIn, and via my work email list.

And if you don’t see more work-related posts from me, please prod me (gently).