I attended a seminar entitled Developing Your Professional Portfolio: Publishing Your Practice and Research which Helen had organised. The seminar was aimed at librarians who are writing or wish to write for publication and library staff who wanted to hear about their peer's library research and practice.
It was really interesting and I could write all day about it but I think my last post was maybe a bit too long (long winded as I am) so I'm going to try and give some general details.
10 speakers gave a total of 9 half hour talks each discussing various aspects of librarians publishing their research and cpd generally. Some points which may be of use to people new to blogging and writing for their peers in general were:
- Start writing! Get something down even if it is only to brainstorm ideas. Several speakers mentioned carrying around notepads to write ideas as they pop into your head. The idea of 'snack writing' was memorable and involved quick 10-20 minute writing sessions during the day because realistically none of us will have the opportunity to sit and write for hours as we need it
- Stop waiting for the perfect time to write because it will never arrive. Just start
- Blogging, even if it is informal, gets you writing and that is an important starting point
- Be confident that you do have something worthwhile to contribute. This is something I am definitely feeling with cpd23 (that I may not have anything valuable to contribute) but the seminar speakers and attendees all felt the same at some point. Recognise that you are capable of making a contribution to the profession
The seminar was really excellent and inspiring and even I feel that writing something to publish is an achievable goal. I could write more but I think I'm already breaking my shorter post promise. Instead I will finish with my favourite piece of advice from the seminar which Helen and others put forward.
Give yourself permission to write badly (because you can and will edit).
So it seems I'm already on track (with the whole writing badly part at least).
This was really useful thanks Damien! I am terrible for putting off writing until the 'perfect time' but the idea of snack writing is definitely something that I'm going to try. In starting to write my blog I've decided that writing badly is inevitable but luckily people seem to be very nice about it!
ReplyDeleteHey Rosie, there was so much useful stuff at the seminar it was hard to be concise. I'm glad you like the 'permission to write badly' bit. It helps to get you writing without worrying excessively and certainly encourages me to ramble on.
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