Way back when I was doing history GCSE, we learned about necessary and sufficient causes. Some things had to be in place to cause an event to happen, though each of those things wasn’t on its own sufficient. So, just in case you like a little backstory, here’s a potted history of what I reckon were some of the necessary causes for Wordspill coming into being five years ago.

Kindness in/kindness out

When I returned to work after my first baby, I was in a gloomy funk. I was dragging myself through the days and seriously unhappy. In desperation, or via some kind of divine intervention, I started a bedtime habit of ‘kindness in/kindness out’. I wrote down three kind things that had happened to me that day (tiny, tiny things like someone smiling me at the bus stop) and three kind things I had done for others (to prove to myself I wasn’t a horrible person). I did that for six months. And I’m convinced it was part of my tunnel digging into a new life.

Scholarship

Words are my home turf. When I decided to quit employment nine years ago and strike out on my own, I had to decide my new direction. Words were it. Then I landed a scholarship for a blogging training programme and that sealed the deal.

Labial sculpting?!?!

My first paid gig was a subcontract for a US writer. Crucially, I had no idea who their client was. Turns out it was a gynecological cosmetic surgeon. The first article I was offered for money was ‘Why Should I Choose Labial Sculpting?’. It taught me a HUGE lesson about who and what I wanted to support with my writing. Words matter.

Mentoring and word-constipation

Years later when I was doing 1:1 writing mentoring for microbusinesses, I noticed that it wasn’t a lack of competence with words, or structuring a blog/social media post that was the problem. It was a disconnection from themselves. My clients weren’t allowing themselves to loosen up on the page/screen. They were holding themselves back, clenched, sort of word-constipated (sorry!). This was so curious and interesting to me… and led me to training in reflective and therapeutic writing in 2019.

The zoom revolution

In 2020, my training was coming to an end, and I was planning what form my new creative writing for wellbeing group aimed at self employed people was going to take. I was looking at yoga studios as venues for a monthly or weekly workshop. I’d call it Wordspill. And then, you may remember, a pretty big wrecking ball hit. And everything went online. I started sharing some #playwithwords prompts. It took off. And then I thought I’d try a month of daily prompts for a group. It sold out in May 2020, so I did it again in June, and then July, and September… and then enough people wanted to do it regularly that by May 2021, the Wordspill Writers Community membership was born.

Join us?

And, there you have it. A bit of human backstory, because we’re all nosy, right? We all like stories.

And, if you want or need to make time for their own creativity and self connection, get ideas for new content, and join such a friendly bunch of writing folk, come join us!

Wordspill exists to remove barriers to writing for play, creativity and self-discovery. You get two new prompts each week, weekly zoom co-writes and a 90 minute workshop each month. It’s a gorgeously nourishing practice in its own right, or you can use it to support your own creative or business writing. Prompts can become story-driven, personal Linked In posts, poems, blogs, flash fiction. All the creative inspiration you need for life and work, right there.