Vickie asked me a very probing question. She said “Nick and I have been discussing the art of being human when we write our eLearning narratives. We think you achieve this, so we are posing the question … how do you do it?”
How I changed my Approach to Writing
In my early days as a trainer it was all classroom. We wrote what we called session books which contained enough explanation for participants to add their own notes. The rest of the delivery of information came from the trainer … the sage on the stage. This all changed when eLearning started to come of age. As trainers, we could no longer feed off the feedback from the participants.
We now had to communicate with an unseen audience and no feedback. Nothing to bounce our ideas off. We were writing in a vacuum.
We had to do something different. I had to reinvent myself.
The only option seemed to be to follow my curiosity.
But it’s surprisingly hard to follow your curiosity.
My inner critic (the troublesome little voice inside my head) thinks it is safer to write like other instructional designers.
And she loudly opposes ideas that seem slightly off the beaten track. On writing this article she told me:
Nobody will find this interesting!
Nobody wants to know how you write!
What arrogance!
So as usual, I listened to my inner critic, I acknowledged her fears, and then I took charge and started writing.
After all these years I’ve become emboldened and ignored my inner critic.
My inner critic’s comment was “You need to be more rational. You write with your brain not with your gut, right?”
But my inner critic doesn’t quite understand how writing works. I don’t just write with my brain.
I write with both body and brain
The idea of writing as embodied practice isnt as crazy as I used to think.
Research suggests that financial traders who are more in-tune with their bodies are more successful. Thinking doesn’t just happen in our brains; there’s wisdom in our bodies, too.
When I ground myself in my body, I feel more alive, I am more inspired, and I can give myself permission to follow my curiosity. I’m more patient, more tolerant of myself. I trust that learners will understand.
My writing process can be messy. But when I ground myself in my body, I don’t let the messiness frustrate me, I trust that good sense will emerge.
When I ground myself in my body, I allow myself to lose inhibitations, to try things out. I can connect with my inner child, I don’t take myself too seriously, but I don’t undermine my self-worth either, I dare to trust my intuition.
That trust … in my observations, in my ideas, in my writing process, in my intuition … has slowly grown over time. Partly because I listened to my inner critic, realised she was only voicing my fears, and took control away from her. I also was flying in the face of my peer group critics who I can still hear muttering in the background. I will continue to dance outside my comfort zone. And partly because I kept writing, and publishing, and tip-toeing out of my comfort zone, it works for me.
I try to protect and nurture that trust. It allows me to write with a sense of calm, to be fully present, and to be my most compassionate self.
I care about my writing and teaching, and my learners.