A bit of good news to end 2021

 As 2021, another year of pandemic rumblings rolls towards its exorable end, perhaps it's time for some good news. So let's forget pandemics, Boris's Christmas parties, and rising inflation for a while and wallow in some good news.

 My writing goals from late 2019 have long taken a back seat. The pandemic of 2020 knocked back my writing targets, and 2021 has been little better; however, I have managed to get a few projects completed, and with some success too!

 Not wishing to tease you any further, I can announce that a feature I have written will be published in the January 2022 edition of Devon Life Magazine. I was thrilled to receive an email from the editor on Thursday morning telling me that my piece was being used and was on its way to the press.

My working title for the piece 'The Trafalgar Way through East Devon' may change in the final edit. It was initially part of my writing course assignment.  It was 1200 words and received positive reviews from my tutor. The first part of the assignment was to create an outline of the intended article. The outline is for the initial pitch towards potential editors. The intention is that when you have an idea for an article, you use the outline to create a pitch letter and don't write the full feature until commissioned by an editor. However, this being an assignment, I had everything ready to go.

In May, I pitched the idea to the Devon Life editor Andy Cooper. I was pleased to receive back, almost straight away, an email asking if I could work the piece up to the ideal features briefing notes and, with a copy date in July, it would be in the August edition. It wasn't easy getting an article of 1200 words down to 700 words with two 120 word breakout/information boxes; however, I got it done, and the copy was submitted a day earlier than requested. 

August, September and November came and went with no news or sign of the printed article.

I lost heart in the article; it had been so long without any news. I began to think that it wasn't good enough. It was disheartening, and it hit my writing output hard.

And then the email arrived; I must admit, my heart missed a beat. I was working. The rest of the team wondered why I was jumping up and down. I am known for jumping up and down, but not always in jubilation!

But have faith. Writing is a waiting game. It doesn't always have immediate successes.

So (yes, I know that's a cliché) here I am at the end of 2021 and, I can finally call myself a professional freelance writer. That's been a dream. It's still a dream. It's not going to make me a millionaire, well, not just yet.  For those in the know, it's a bit more than a CAT 4, but not life-changing at the moment. It seems strange invoicing someone as a freelance writer.

I now know what is required, how to go about it and realise that I need patience. The editor did apologise, 'Sorry for the delay in using it - we have been under unprecedented pressure on space due to the economic impact of the pandemic.'

If you don't already read Devon Life, please treat yourself to this issue or maybe subscribe to the Readly app, and you can read it monthly for the cost of a subscription.

Here's to a fantastic 2022, but not before an equally remarkable 2021 Christmas. I  promise there is more writing to come in 2022!

 

An update for the blog as I have neglected it for far too long. Thankfully the writing motivation has come back after the malaise of the pandemic.

I had an idea that I wished to pitch to an Editor. I worked up an idea and a pitch letter and sent it off to a well-known magazine. Two days later, I received a very positive reply.

I’ve been very excited about this as all being well; it will be my first paying gig as a writer. The job of editing the piece down from 1200 words to 650-700 word main body and two 120 word information boxes is proving more challenging than coming up with the idea of the piece in the first place! I’m also going to have to have a trip out to take some good photographs as well.

I have a copy date later in June to work toward, however, I have already started, and I would like to get it to the editor in good time.

This all came about from an article I had to write for an assignment for my course. It reminded me how to construct an outline and pitch letter, and the positive feedback from my tutor gave me the confidence to pitch to the editor.

My next assignment is to do a restaurant review. I’ve booked a place out in the next couple of weeks, and hopefully, I will be able to get that into a publication.

I also have ideas for a couple of blogs. For one, I have quite a bit of information already to work on, and my assignments have suggested another one. It is finding the time to sit quietly to start them off, which is the problem, but a nice problem to have.

My course is also encouraging me to pitch a lot more ideas to editors, as the more you can get out there, the better chance you have of getting one picked up. I have quite a few articles that I can revisit and send out outlines.

The Green Shoots of Spring and Motivation is Returning

I  have always believed that to be considered a writer, you have to write.

 It sounds simple; does it not?

When I finally had the confidence back in 2019 to pursue my dream of being a published writer, little could we know what 2020 would bring?

 Should lockdown have been a writers dream?  You have time to set up in that favourite place, a notebook full of ideas and most of all, peace. What is there not to like?

Indeed editors and publishers have seen an increase in submissions. Great, but is that the reality?

The reality for me is that it has been an adamant time for my writing career. Firstly, I contacted Covid-19 on the day that the Prime Minister locked the country down back in March 2019.   I wasn’t confident that what made me feel so awful was, but indeed it was the virus.  Testing was all but non-excitant at that time. I eventually got back to work after two weeks, and it was full-on. I work for the NHS as a Health and Social Care Team Coordinator for Urgent Community Response teams. We assist the emergency and acute wards to discharge patients with short term care. The team then works to either get the patient independent of care or, the more often used option, to move them on to a longer-term care provision. We also assist GP’s in keeping patients out of the hospital in the first instance. We are a bustling service even in ‘peacetime’, let alone in the middle of a global pandemic!

That is what I do for a day job.  In the middle of all this, I changed teams for work and then we had to move home, and my wife and I lost a Mother and Father, respectively —all in all, not the ideal situation for a writer. Admittedly, I managed to get a couple of articles written and completed a bit more of my novel. I have been writing a diary, journal throughout, which now amounts to three notebooks and a further one in use. Quite a few words, you might agree?

Motivation, sadly, was waning. What was the reason?

I think that it may well be the effects of ‘long Covid’. I have a reduced sense of smell, hyposmia, and at various times have suffered the loss of taste, ageusia, or the partial loss, hypogeusia. Occasionally, I have periods of significant fatigue.

Work has been ever vigilant in encouraging us to take our annual leave. The nature of our work leads many of our team to consider others before themselves. I came into the last quarter still having two and a half weeks left on my account. I took the first two weeks of March as annual leave and worked three and four day weeks for the next two weeks. A man of leisure, I think not.

I then was thought to have suffered a Transient Ischemic Attack. After being called in by my GP, I was stopped from driving, put on aspirin and referred to the Stroke Clinic at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. Thankfully, I did not have a vascular problem, and the symptoms that I had were more likely to be Vestibular Migraines. Migraines without the painful headaches. That and an opticians appointment took up the best part of my two weeks holiday!

Plenty of time for writing then, I hear you say. The motivation was lacking once more. But now we are into April, and the days are getting longer, things a feeling that they might be changing. The country is attempting to come out of the Covid malaise that we have been in for over 12 months. And I am sat here writing for the blog once more. It must be getting better!

I have had an article published in the Blue Band once again, and I will post about that in a few days. I have a travel article written for my writing course, and I have been prevaricating sending that off to my tutor. I only need to get everything together and get it sent off. I also promised myself that I would start sending pitches to editors more regular than I have been doing. The more that I can get in front of editors, the more likely I will get picked up.

Looking forward to what I expect to be doing for the blog, I have the Blue Band article that I would like to share with you, and I have an idea for a dog walking blog, which I aim to try out here first.

There we are then. I make no apologies for this first blog in a while being a bit self-indulgent. It has got me writing once more, and that can only be a help. I’m looking forward now to get ‘cracking ‘ on writing and getting my word count back up and beyond to where it was before the pandemic. Here is 800 to start with!

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back soon.

The Blue Band - First Edition 2020 - Leaving - Coming to the End

 

This is an article I was asked to write for The Blue Band - The Journal of the Royal Marines Band Service.

It talks about how it feels when the time has come and you have to leave the Band Service.

This was published in the first edition of 2020

ONE of the most frightening days that I had in my 25 years of service with the Royal Marines Band Service was the day that I left. I had secured a job that was starting the very next morning, everything was sorted and I had even attended a couple of days earlier for the hand over from the previous post holder. But that sense of dread and fear as I drove out of Unicorn Gate was so palpable that I had to pull over in a flood of tears further down the road.

There is one sure thing, that no matter how long that you serve in any of HM Armed Forces, one day you will have to leave and return to whence you came, ‘Civvy Street’. From Field Marshall right down to the lowly and humble Junior Soldier, we have all got to finish at one time or another.

Without a doubt, the Royal Marines Band Service produces some of the finest experienced musicians, highly qualified and the envy of armed forces musicians worldwide. They are instilled with superb leadership skills from a world-renowned Corps. Add to all this, a plethora of life skills and experience of both musical and military operations, we should find life in the great outside a breeze, shouldn’t we?

Leaving an organisation that you have lived and breathed for a considerable amount of time is never going to be easy.  If you have been an NCO you will quickly find the average civilian will not immediately drop what they are doing and go and do something else for you. Their timekeeping is not what you would expect and they certainly don’t shine their shoes daily. Surprisingly one of the first things that I missed after leaving was not having somebody to tell me when to get a haircut!

You have served for a good period of time with the band service; you have been afforded and given great loyalty to your colleagues. Certainly, after the last couple of decades, you will probably have a chest full of medals. You will have gained the respect of your peers. You have massive experience both musically and militarily.  All that will mean absolutely nothing to your average civilian colleagues, sadly. They even may see it as something to use against you. It has even been known for them to complain that you treat them like a soldier. You will feel that you are just getting on with your work, getting things done whilst those around seem to be slacking. There will be those who completely do not understand why you ever served in the military at all!

 That all sounds like there is a great conspiracy against former military people; let me assure you there isn’t, but it might feel like that. It is this feeling that bought my mental health down and from my research. I am not the only one out there either.

As successful as I was upon leaving the band service, it was not easy. I had to work hard not only to understand the work I was being asked to do initially but also the differing attitudes to work, getting things done by my now civilian colleagues.  I ended up an ‘inwards rower’, taking all things on and eventually all became too much. My doctor explained it to me this way. Imagine yourself as a sponge. You spend time soaking up the new work, but at some point, the sponge fills up and the water spills out. It is at times like this that you start to feel depressed, anxious, suffering sleepless nights and your general wellbeing goes downhill. Those who have suffered this will agree with me that this is not a good place to be in.

Mental Health is currently high on the agenda both in society and within the armed forces and quite rightly so. Organisations now train Mental Health First Aiders and access to mental health professionals is so much easier now generally. I now work in the NHS, in Health and Social Care, and wellbeing events are actively encouraged. My colleagues have recently attended a happiness event, which has benefitted them greatly already.

 If I think back over the years, the Band Service has served, in some capacity, in nearly every conflict that the Royal Marines Corps have been involved with and some operations where they haven’t too. Band Service members have been witness to many things that most normal people will never see in a lifetime and add to this atrocities and accidents over the years, it’s a wonder that there hasn’t been a whole host mental of health problems, or has there?

I am positive that there are those within the Band service and the wider band service family who have have felt like they are treading water or feel that they are like a swan, serenely sailing along and paddling like mad under the surface.  Symptoms vary but this is not a natural feeling and needs to be sorted.

A change of circumstances is never easy for anyone no matter where they are in society, but there are not many people these days who will stay with a company for 25, 30 or 37 years man and boy, girl and woman. Leaving the service is never going to be easy after all that time and couple that with probable retraining and relocation, it is not going to be plain sailing.

That feeling of not being able to conjure up a positive attitude and that overwhelming feeling of isolation can be horrible. Transitioning into civilian life can be helped by organisations such as SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity and can be of great help, so too can the NHS website. There are a few self-help strategies that you can undertake; talk, exercise, drink less and be mindful of others and of course yourself.

During my research for this article, I have discovered several sad and rather disturbing stories.  Stories numbering from not being able to settle, loneliness, bullying and many more. To the friends and former colleagues who have opened up to me, you have been immensely brave, conduct very much becoming of a Royal Marine. But in all seriousness, I hope that being able to talk has helped you a little bit. To all those still serving please remember that fateful day will eventually arrive when you will have met the Principle Director of Music for the last time, your kit will have been returned to the stores and the clerk is cutting up your identity card in front you. It’s all over. I miss being in the band service every day and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Life has thrown me double sixes many times, but there are those downtimes. Through it all keep smiling, talking and most importantly of all, keep looking after yourself. Don't forget, you will always be a Royal Marine.

ENDS

Information Boxes/Sidebars

Useful Links

https://www.nhs.uk/

https://www.forces.net/news/new-military-mental-health-helpline-launched

https://www.ssafa.org.uk/

Mental health problems can expose a number of emotional symptoms of which some are:

·         Changes in mood

·         Erratic decision making

·         Chronic anxiety

·         Lack of self-worth

·         Impulsive actions

·         Increased drinking

Handy tips for self-help:

·         Talk – It is very important for your own wellbeing that you open up to your support network and talk openly about your thoughts and feelings. Don’t let them build up.

·         Exercise – Regular exercise can boost your self-esteem and is also good for your wellbeing and will help your sleep patterns.

·         Drink less – Stay within recommended daily alcohol limits, 3-4 units for men and 2-3 units for women. It is also helpful to have 2 or 3 days off alcohol per week.

·         Be mindful of others – Caring for others is often essential in maintaining relationships with the people you care about. It can help put your own problems into perspective.