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Caroline Sanderson reflects on her Writing for Life residency

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The RLF’s Writing for Life programmes enable our writers to share their skills in the community and workplace.  Workshops are delivered in collaboration with partner organisations including NHS, trade unions, and voluntary and community sector groups. Writing for Life Fellows work with adults and young people from all sectors of the community, including individuals recovering from physical or mental health issues, vulnerable migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, people who are isolated due to caring roles, and others who are marginalised or neglected. But they also run workshops and tutorials in the workplace – helping people approach their professional writing tasks with confidence, effectiveness and even joy.

Two years ago, RLF Fellow Caroline Sanderson took up the first RLF Writer-in-Residence post at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (Somerset FT), a role that saw her support staff across the Trust to communicate more effectively through their written communications. As she hands over the reins to Meg Sanders, Caroline reflects on her time as Writer-in-Residence in a thank-you to colleagues and staff that we’re delighted to share here.

Now my time as Somerset FT’s first Royal Literary Fund Writer-in-Residence is coming to an end, I’m reflecting on what a privilege it has been to support all kinds of writing across the trust. And what a joy to meet so many committed, talented and interesting people over the past two years.

I’ve worked with colleagues both online and in-person; providing writing skills workshops on subjects including (to name only three) Reflective Writing, Responding to Complaints and Effective Email.

These workshops are designed to be interactive, fun and as engaging as possible; and so it makes me very pleased when I receive comments like this one:

“You helped me rethink my writing process, style and structure which was helpful…and actually quite liberating.”

I’ve also been offering free one-to-one tutorials; independent and confidential online sessions aimed at anyone wanting more specific help with any writing task, whether it’s someone writing reports for the first time in a new job, or drafting a personal statement; or working on a Masters level essay.

I’ve been a freelance professional writer for 25 years and in that time have honed and developed my own skills through my journalism, through interviewing book authors, and also through the adventure of writing six books of my own.

In 2016, I was fortunate enough to start working with the RLF – a 200-year-old charity with a commitment to advancing public education.

It employs the skills of dozens of professional writers like myself across the UK, paying us to work both in schools and universities and across the community to help support people with writing.

I passionately believe that anyone can become more proficient at writing, through planning; by thinking carefully about structure, having clarity and concision as watchwords, and bearing one’s reader in mind at all times.

I love deploying my own writing experience to try and help others become more confident writers. Particularly people who perhaps found writing challenging at school, and have shied away from writing since.

Having confidence in your ideas, and your ability to convey them in writing is perhaps the most important thing of all. So, I’m always delighted when people say that I’ve made them feel more comfortable with the written word.

Here’s more feedback I’ve received during my time at the trust:

“I didn’t know what to expect from the workshop and found it a bit daunting at the beginning. I am glad that I stayed though as I found it so helpful and think it will help me structure and plan my writing right from the start.”

“I loved the interactive element of the workshop. It has given me a lot more confidence with my writing and I have taken away some very practical tips and advice.”

“The techniques you went through….were really effective and I surprised myself with what I was able to achieve following through on your advice.”

And wonderfully, the benefits have not all been one-way. Working with colleagues at Somerset FT has also been refreshing for my own writing – having to reflect on how I construct sentences for example, or why I organise a written draft as I do is very thought-provoking for my own practice.

As writers, we never stop learning, and none of us writes a perfect draft first time around. So much of writing is about refining and editing to make our words work better.

If there’s one message I’d like to leave you with, it’s that writing is a process and something everyone can learn to do better. Including me!

By Caroline Sanderson.


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