Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me and I co-host The Writing Road Trip. Beth and I co-write together in the mornings virtually via Zoom. We’ve completed three books between us in 2021 and we’ve found community and partnership helps get writing happening and books written. So from this, we’ve shaped up exactly what helped us into an exciting new community writing program in 2022.
So join us. Get on our email list now and we’ll send you information and inspiration for your writing journey:
The Writing Road Trip is an exciting collaboration for Beth Cregan and me. We have created exactly what we found worked when we faced the task of writing and completing our books together.
The program has three components that we plan to keep cycling through so join us at any time. Join the email list to keep in touch with what’s available. Here are the three components!
We kick off with a free writing challenge focusing on writing identity, a two week challenge helps you explore your relationship with writing and your unique writing identity. Whatever stage you are at in your writing journey, this is a powerful foundation for your writing.
Then we have a six-week Writing Road Map course that helps you zero in on your purpose and direction. We work on: creating your vision, getting in flow, mindset, creativity for the long-haul and sharing your work with the world. It helps you map the writing journey your way with the support of community.
The Writing Road Trip is a longer community program for extended support as you write featuring virtual writing retreats, community calls to check in on your writing progress and writing input as required based on what you need!
We are kicking off on the Writing Road Trip in May 2022! So get on the email list for the latest news as well as regular writing inspiration and tips from us.
Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:
Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube
The transcript of the conversation is below if you prefer to read or read along.
Transcript of our conversation
Beth Cregan: Now just waiting. I think we’re going to get Terri up on screen any minute. There we go. We did it. So welcome to anybody who’s watching this live. And also to anybody who might catch up on this, on the replay. We’re so thrilled to have you here and you can tell by our smiles that we’re really excited to be spending this time and telling you what we’ve been planning over the last weeks and months. So I’m Beth from Write Away with Me.
Terri Connellan: And I’m Terri Connellan from Quiet Writing and it’s fantastic to be on Instagram live together. This is our first time popping on together and we’ve had a lot of laughs getting connected and things organised, but it’s great to be with you Beth, and to be sharing our story.
Beth Cregan: Exactly. And I think what we’d really like to start with is to tell you a little bit about how this program came to be, because we have developed something that comes from our experience of writing successfully together and finishing our books. And we’re hoping it will really inspire you to join us next year and take out your writing program.
So if we zoom back to the beginning of last year, I had a draft of a book and a publishing contract, and I was just beginning to restructure that book when COVID hit. And of course, all of our lives changed dramatically. And I was at home overwhelmed and anxious and really wondering how I was going to make my commitment of finishing this book.
Then it really became important to me, or it became obvious to me that I needed support. And I put out a call to writers I knew in my circle to see if anybody wanted to write in the mornings together online. And that was how Terri and I first connected. We knew each other, but that was how we connected in terms of our writing together. And other people came in and out of that group, but we hung in there, didn’t we Terri?
Terri Connellan: We did.
I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.
I know for me, for my situation, I was writing two books at once. And I think when we connected, I was well through the draft of one and the other, I still had to do quite a lot of work on. So it was actually quite a hard slog at the time when we connected, because it was working through the editing when you’re going over and over and over drafts. And when I went through that process, it was quite challenging. So to have people who you can connect with really helps with that and getting up early and writing with you really helped to get that writing done. It was so much more fun.
Beth Cregan: Absolutely. That was my sense of it too. And now end of if that was somewhere in the midst of 2020, now we’re at the end of 2021. And I have my book now finished and going through its final edit with the publisher and Terri, tell everybody your great news too.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. I was able to get two books finished at once. So ‘Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition‘ and accompanying workbook, which I worked on in conjunction and they were published by the kind press in September this year 2021 and that’s after four and a half, five years of writing. So yeah, it was fantastic to have that support to be able to finish that work. So, yeah. Thanks for being there. And it’s great to share our story.
Beth Cregan: And I think that it is the things that we learned during that time that helped us achieve our goals.
And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.
I know for me, that time in the morning felt really sacred. It felt like a safe space. It felt like a creative space and it wasn’t just the opportunity to work and, and know that somebody was holding space with you at the same time and offering you that courage but I think it was just our conversations. We’d have a break and it was our conversations that made all the difference.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think for me it was definitely that accountability of getting up early to write, but also very much the camaraderie around writing. So that ability to one, write together, but also just to stop and have conversations about what was hard, what was easy, what we were learning. We often think writing’s a really solitary process. Obviously there’s aspects of it that are, but there’s plenty of aspects of writing that are supported by being with other people. And, people talk about how lonely it is. It can be super lonely and I think having community on the journey can help us incredibly. So, yeah. So it’s like a magic sauce, Beth, that we want to share with others.
Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. And I know for me, it was the fact that there was somebody just ahead of me in the journey that made such a difference because the overwhelming part is that you don’t quite know. It’s an organic process and you don’t quite know how it’s going to come together. So just having you one step or two steps ahead meant that I had a path forming and it normalized what I was doing, the overwhelm, the fear that dealing with my inner critic, the resistance. It really normalized all of those things because I knew that you were feeling them too.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely.
That sense of, you’re not alone and it’s quite a normal part of the journey. Yeah, I think the idea of normalising, it’s really important. Also for me, I never went into any session or any times we were writing together without having a note pad or pencil beside me, where I was writing down a whole list: here’s a great podcast, here’s a great book.
And I know you recommended Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process. To me, that’s been such a fantastic inspirational book for my journey and for my sharing with others. So I think just sharing insights about writing and resources helped incredibly too. So it’s a whole lot of things, isn’t it?
Beth Cregan: Well, the combined resources was just an absolute bonus because I now have bookshelves and kindles full of things that I know you found helpful and no doubt you have the same experience because everybody finds their own, you know, they follow different people. They find their own magic in whatever resources they use. And then we had the chance to pull those together and share them, which was really fantastic.
Terri Connellan: So it might be time for us to share about what we’re thinking of or what we’re planning to offer all these great experiences that we’ve had. What we found was that from that we’re able to create a program that’s something that we wish we had while we were going through the process.
Beth Cregan: I think every time we’ve got together to work and dream up this program cause it’s been a Thursday afternoon burst of inspiration when we get together and do it. And every time I finish, I think, man, I wish I had this when I was writing or when I was doing this journey, because it’s exactly what I would have needed to help me along my way. So how about I start by just talking a little bit about the challenge.
The program will have three parts and we’re going to start with a live challenge. It will involve six free activities or workshops over two weeks. And that’s just to ride the energy of the new year, and get everybody thinking about what their writing goals might be for the year. How they feel as a writer, what is their writing identity as well as just inspire and spark imaginations and creativity. So that will involve lots of hands-on writing and interactive opportunities, which will be really fun way to start the program.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It’s called The Writing Road Trip, the whole program. The first part is really a bit of way-finding, like getting a compass, getting all the travel books out and deciding where you might go. But again, having fellow travellers, even at the early stage of the journey to have a chat about what you’re thinking about, how you feel about yourself as a writer, as Beth said, and then we thought we’d build on that with a six week more intensive course, which is a Roadmap. And that’s really about creating the shape of your project and what it might look like. So in that program, we’ll have a look at things like, what your purpose is, what your why is, what the steps might be, what do you want to do with what you write?
My journey has been very much that, knowing what I want to do with it at the end, I needed to know a bit at the beginning or at least have some idea. Do you want to publish? How do you want to publish? And we’re talking in this, it could be a book, but it could also be blog project. It could be feature articles, series of feature articles, could be social media. It could be writing a course, any sort of writing. So in that six weeks Roadmap program, we’ll be looking at: what you want to do, where you might go, why it’s important to you, because one thing I’ve found, and I know you have too, Beth, is that knowing our why really helps us on the whole journey.
Beth Cregan: Yeah. And I love the imagery of the road trip because I think it was born out of a time when we were quite stationary with lockdown and road tripping was completely off the agenda.
But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.
And then once we’ve done that six weeks together where we will really shape and map out where you’re going and what you want to do with your project, then we have a six month community. And in that community and program, that membership, you’ll have a chance to meet other writers, to work together, to be accountable to each other, to listen to other guest speakers who arecoming into that space, to share our resources.
So, not only will you have the opportunity to connect with our guests, but you’ll have a wide library of resources that we can share with you. And also, which I think will be really helpful because it’s what we have done. And we still do many mornings every week is to have virtual retreats where we come together and we’re online in our own space, but we’re working together and sharing what we’re doing, our goals and our intentions and carving out space, making that container to allow the writing to happen. So that to me is a really important part of this journey because I don’t think I realized until we started working together, Terri, just how I’ve given lip service to community, but I don’t think I really understood it. And now I really do see that that makes all the difference.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve often been envious of people who have writing groups and join together to to write. And particularly with the way things work now that we are perhaps not connecting as much or traveling across the world, or as you said, actually doing road trips as much, being able to connect virtually and write together, have community together and connect asynchronously as well as at the same time, it’s been absolutely perfect. And I know one of my clients said to me, I didn’t think I had time for a group program, I just wanted to get the writing done. And I think that’s, our tendency is to want to put our head down and just get the writing done.
But I think our experiences have taught us that to have connection to someone who knows what’s happening on the journey to talk through, when you get to the really difficult things, to be able to have a safe space to be heard, you don’t always have to solve the problems, but it’s just not having it rattling around inside your head can make a huge difference.
And I think we’ve both said without each other, we wouldn’t be where we are today with the projects that we’ve done. So that’s what we really hope to share with the community work. And yeah, that idea of being connected with creativity.
Beth Cregan: I think if you imagine writing as flow and we often talk about creative flow, I feel like community removes many of the obstacles. For me, it really allows the writing when you have that space to write, you actually use your time really productively, because you have a lot of your other needs met in that community space.
Terri Connellan: I think I’ve said to you before that, we’d get up early, six at the moment. If you’re not there and I get up early, I just faff around. It’s just amazing that having someone there, you know, we write for 25 minutes, we have a break. These are the sort of practices we can share with people. Another thing we’ve talked about doing is buddying people up potentially, if people are interested in this sort of experience we’ve had, because it’s made all the difference.
Beth Cregan: Yeah and I know we were talking this morning about the fact that we’re in the middle of a reno and our, Terri and my, writing time hasn’t been happening. And my rest of the day doesn’t feel the same and it is nowhere near as productive as having that regular routine. So it’s reminded me once again, that a writing practice is made up of so many elements that fit together. And once you get what’s right for you, what you need to move forward. So we hoping that you will be interested in joining us. We’re going to be kicking off at the end of Jan with our challenge, and you can be part of that free challenge and have the opportunity to come and work with us and see what it’s like to have that experience.
Terri Connellan: And so the first step today we’re opening the waitlist, which is really exciting. So inviting you to come on the Road Trip with us. So we’ve both popped the links in our bios and that waitlist information tells you about the program. There’s quite a lot of information there in that post if you have a look and then there’s an opportunity just to join our email list, which is a joint email list. Beth and I have our own businesses, our own email lists. This is a unique one, unique to Writing Road Trip. So we’ll just be sending information out about the Road Trip and, and writing inspiration tips to inspire you particularly about community.
Beth Cregan: And we would love you to join us and have an opportunity to be supported by the lessons that we’ve learned along the way to finish. You finished your two books and I think you’re nearly working on the third.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, I am. Yeah, it’s happening in the background. So again, it’s whatever projects and it’s not genre specific. I think that’s something too we want to mention to people. We’re not going to be talking about say, novel writing specifically. But you could be writing a novel, it’s certainly a goal of mine next year. Mm. But whatever writing it is, we’re here to support you around the writing process generally, the community, the support. We’re both writing teachers by background. We’ve told you about ourselves in that landing page (waitlist page). I’m a coach and teacher and Beth also is mentoring and many years’ experience as a teacher. So together, we bring a fantastic skillset too. And of course everyone who joins brings their wisdom. That’s what I love about group programs. We met through a group program, didn’t we Beth?
Beth Cregan:
And we really feel like this will be a co-creation. We will set that structure up and use what we know in that space or share what we know in that space, but it really will be created with everybody and what they bring into that program as well, which is really exciting.
Terri Connellan: It is absolutely. So yes, we hope you’ll join us. So as I said, we’ll both put a post up today kicking off the waitlist. So any questions feel free to pop them in now, or we can pick them up on our respective Instagram profiles. So look forward to connecting with you and to going on a Road Trip with you, writing away.
Beth Cregan: Totally!. And have a great day and any questions, please shoot them our way. We’d love to answer them. And we’d love to see you on that wait list so that you can get more information as it comes into the world. Yeah. Bye.
We hope you’ll join us!
You can get on the email list here and find our more about us and the program here:
I’m joining forces with Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me to co-host The Writing Road Trip in 2022. Beth and I co-write together in the mornings virtually via Zoom. We’ve completed three books between us in 2021 and we’ve found community and partnership helps get writing happening and books written. So from this, we’ve shaped up exactly what helped us into an exciting new community writing program in 2022.
We kick off today 31 January! So join us. Get on our email list now and we’ll send you all the information and links to join in:
The Writing Road Trip is an exciting new collaboration for Beth Cregan and me. We have created exactly what we found worked when we faced the task of writing and completing our books together.
The program kicks off with a free writing challenge focusing on writing identity. This two week challenge helps you explore your relationship with writing and your unique writing identity. Whatever stage you are at in your writing journey, this is a powerful foundation for your writing for 2022.
We want to challenge you, nurture your creativity and provide opportunities to connect with other writers in a positive and affirming community.
Here’s what you need to know:
✍🏼 The Challenge goes from Monday 31 Jan to Friday 11 Feb.
✍🏼There are 6 x 30 minute live workshops Tues Wed Thurs each week.
✍🏼 Workshops are live at 7pm AEDT Sydney/Melb via Zoom + recorded.
✍🏼 Each workshop has a key focus, writing prompt & time to chat.
✍🏼 The private Facebook group is open for further connection & exploration.
✍🏼 The Challenge Workbook is ready for you to download.
Don’t forget to add us to your contacts so our emails land in your inbox.
The Challenge is free so connect with us, to get writing in 2022.
If you are already on our email list, then check out today’s email with all the Go Live links. DM us if you haven’t received it for any reason! We don’t want you to miss out.
Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube
The transcript of the conversation is below if you prefer to read or read along.
Transcript of our conversation
Beth Cregan: Now just waiting. I think we’re going to get Terri up on screen any minute. There we go. We did it. So welcome to anybody who’s watching this live. And also to anybody who might catch up on this, on the replay. We’re so thrilled to have you here and you can tell by our smiles that we’re really excited to be spending this time and telling you what we’ve been planning over the last weeks and months. So I’m Beth from Write Away with Me.
Terri Connellan: And I’m Terri Connellan from Quiet Writing and it’s fantastic to be on Instagram live together. This is our first time popping on together and we’ve had a lot of laughs getting connected and things organised, but it’s great to be with you Beth, and to be sharing our story.
Beth Cregan: Exactly. And I think what we’d really like to start with is to tell you a little bit about how this program came to be, because we have developed something that comes from our experience of writing successfully together and finishing our books. And we’re hoping it will really inspire you to join us next year and take out your writing program.
So if we zoom back to the beginning of last year, I had a draft of a book and a publishing contract, and I was just beginning to restructure that book when COVID hit. And of course, all of our lives changed dramatically. And I was at home overwhelmed and anxious and really wondering how I was going to make my commitment of finishing this book.
Then it really became important to me, or it became obvious to me that I needed support. And I put out a call to writers I knew in my circle to see if anybody wanted to write in the mornings together online. And that was how Terri and I first connected. We knew each other, but that was how we connected in terms of our writing together. And other people came in and out of that group, but we hung in there, didn’t we Terri?
Terri Connellan: We did.
I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.
I know for me, for my situation, I was writing two books at once. And I think when we connected, I was well through the draft of one and the other, I still had to do quite a lot of work on. So it was actually quite a hard slog at the time when we connected, because it was working through the editing when you’re going over and over and over drafts. And when I went through that process, it was quite challenging. So to have people who you can connect with really helps with that and getting up early and writing with you really helped to get that writing done. It was so much more fun.
Beth Cregan: Absolutely. That was my sense of it too. And now end of if that was somewhere in the midst of 2020, now we’re at the end of 2021. And I have my book now finished and going through its final edit with the publisher and Terri, tell everybody your great news too.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. I was able to get two books finished at once. So ‘Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition‘ and accompanying workbook, which I worked on in conjunction and they were published by the kind press in September this year 2021 and that’s after four and a half, five years of writing. So yeah, it was fantastic to have that support to be able to finish that work. So, yeah. Thanks for being there. And it’s great to share our story.
Beth Cregan: And I think that it is the things that we learned during that time that helped us achieve our goals.
And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.
I know for me, that time in the morning felt really sacred. It felt like a safe space. It felt like a creative space and it wasn’t just the opportunity to work and, and know that somebody was holding space with you at the same time and offering you that courage but I think it was just our conversations. We’d have a break and it was our conversations that made all the difference.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think for me it was definitely that accountability of getting up early to write, but also very much the camaraderie around writing. So that ability to one, write together, but also just to stop and have conversations about what was hard, what was easy, what we were learning. We often think writing’s a really solitary process. Obviously there’s aspects of it that are, but there’s plenty of aspects of writing that are supported by being with other people. And, people talk about how lonely it is. It can be super lonely and I think having community on the journey can help us incredibly. So, yeah. So it’s like a magic sauce, Beth, that we want to share with others.
Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. And I know for me, it was the fact that there was somebody just ahead of me in the journey that made such a difference because the overwhelming part is that you don’t quite know. It’s an organic process and you don’t quite know how it’s going to come together. So just having you one step or two steps ahead meant that I had a path forming and it normalized what I was doing, the overwhelm, the fear that dealing with my inner critic, the resistance. It really normalized all of those things because I knew that you were feeling them too.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely.
That sense of, you’re not alone and it’s quite a normal part of the journey. Yeah, I think the idea of normalising, it’s really important. Also for me, I never went into any session or any times we were writing together without having a note pad or pencil beside me, where I was writing down a whole list: here’s a great podcast, here’s a great book.
And I know you recommended Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process. To me, that’s been such a fantastic inspirational book for my journey and for my sharing with others. So I think just sharing insights about writing and resources helped incredibly too. So it’s a whole lot of things, isn’t it?
Beth Cregan: Well, the combined resources was just an absolute bonus because I now have bookshelves and kindles full of things that I know you found helpful and no doubt you have the same experience because everybody finds their own, you know, they follow different people. They find their own magic in whatever resources they use. And then we had the chance to pull those together and share them, which was really fantastic.
Terri Connellan: So it might be time for us to share about what we’re thinking of or what we’re planning to offer all these great experiences that we’ve had. What we found was that from that we’re able to create a program that’s something that we wish we had while we were going through the process.
Beth Cregan: I think every time we’ve got together to work and dream up this program cause it’s been a Thursday afternoon burst of inspiration when we get together and do it. And every time I finish, I think, man, I wish I had this when I was writing or when I was doing this journey, because it’s exactly what I would have needed to help me along my way. So how about I start by just talking a little bit about the challenge.
The program will have three parts and we’re going to start with a live challenge. It will involve six free activities or workshops over two weeks. And that’s just to ride the energy of the new year, and get everybody thinking about what their writing goals might be for the year. How they feel as a writer, what is their writing identity as well as just inspire and spark imaginations and creativity. So that will involve lots of hands-on writing and interactive opportunities, which will be really fun way to start the program.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It’s called The Writing Road Trip, the whole program. The first part is really a bit of way-finding, like getting a compass, getting all the travel books out and deciding where you might go. But again, having fellow travellers, even at the early stage of the journey to have a chat about what you’re thinking about, how you feel about yourself as a writer, as Beth said, and then we thought we’d build on that with a six week more intensive course, which is a Roadmap. And that’s really about creating the shape of your project and what it might look like. So in that program, we’ll have a look at things like, what your purpose is, what your why is, what the steps might be, what do you want to do with what you write?
My journey has been very much that, knowing what I want to do with it at the end, I needed to know a bit at the beginning or at least have some idea. Do you want to publish? How do you want to publish? And we’re talking in this, it could be a book, but it could also be blog project. It could be feature articles, series of feature articles, could be social media. It could be writing a course, any sort of writing. So in that six weeks Roadmap program, we’ll be looking at: what you want to do, where you might go, why it’s important to you, because one thing I’ve found, and I know you have too, Beth, is that knowing our why really helps us on the whole journey.
Beth Cregan: Yeah. And I love the imagery of the road trip because I think it was born out of a time when we were quite stationary with lockdown and road tripping was completely off the agenda.
But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.
And then once we’ve done that six weeks together where we will really shape and map out where you’re going and what you want to do with your project, then we have a six month community. And in that community and program, that membership, you’ll have a chance to meet other writers, to work together, to be accountable to each other, to listen to other guest speakers who arecoming into that space, to share our resources.
So, not only will you have the opportunity to connect with our guests, but you’ll have a wide library of resources that we can share with you. And also, which I think will be really helpful because it’s what we have done. And we still do many mornings every week is to have virtual retreats where we come together and we’re online in our own space, but we’re working together and sharing what we’re doing, our goals and our intentions and carving out space, making that container to allow the writing to happen. So that to me is a really important part of this journey because I don’t think I realized until we started working together, Terri, just how I’ve given lip service to community, but I don’t think I really understood it. And now I really do see that that makes all the difference.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve often been envious of people who have writing groups and join together to to write. And particularly with the way things work now that we are perhaps not connecting as much or traveling across the world, or as you said, actually doing road trips as much, being able to connect virtually and write together, have community together and connect asynchronously as well as at the same time, it’s been absolutely perfect. And I know one of my clients said to me, I didn’t think I had time for a group program, I just wanted to get the writing done. And I think that’s, our tendency is to want to put our head down and just get the writing done.
But I think our experiences have taught us that to have connection to someone who knows what’s happening on the journey to talk through, when you get to the really difficult things, to be able to have a safe space to be heard, you don’t always have to solve the problems, but it’s just not having it rattling around inside your head can make a huge difference.
And I think we’ve both said without each other, we wouldn’t be where we are today with the projects that we’ve done. So that’s what we really hope to share with the community work. And yeah, that idea of being connected with creativity.
Beth Cregan: I think if you imagine writing as flow and we often talk about creative flow, I feel like community removes many of the obstacles. For me, it really allows the writing when you have that space to write, you actually use your time really productively, because you have a lot of your other needs met in that community space.
Terri Connellan: I think I’ve said to you before that, we’d get up early, six at the moment. If you’re not there and I get up early, I just faff around. It’s just amazing that having someone there, you know, we write for 25 minutes, we have a break. These are the sort of practices we can share with people. Another thing we’ve talked about doing is buddying people up potentially, if people are interested in this sort of experience we’ve had, because it’s made all the difference.
Beth Cregan: Yeah and I know we were talking this morning about the fact that we’re in the middle of a reno and our, Terri and my, writing time hasn’t been happening. And my rest of the day doesn’t feel the same and it is nowhere near as productive as having that regular routine. So it’s reminded me once again, that a writing practice is made up of so many elements that fit together. And once you get what’s right for you, what you need to move forward. So we hoping that you will be interested in joining us. We’re going to be kicking off at the end of Jan with our challenge, and you can be part of that free challenge and have the opportunity to come and work with us and see what it’s like to have that experience.
Terri Connellan: And so the first step today we’re opening the waitlist, which is really exciting. So inviting you to come on the Road Trip with us. So we’ve both popped the links in our bios and that waitlist information tells you about the program. There’s quite a lot of information there in that post if you have a look and then there’s an opportunity just to join our email list, which is a joint email list. Beth and I have our own businesses, our own email lists. This is a unique one, unique to Writing Road Trip. So we’ll just be sending information out about the Road Trip and, and writing inspiration tips to inspire you particularly about community.
Beth Cregan: And we would love you to join us and have an opportunity to be supported by the lessons that we’ve learned along the way to finish. You finished your two books and I think you’re nearly working on the third.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, I am. Yeah, it’s happening in the background. So again, it’s whatever projects and it’s not genre specific. I think that’s something too we want to mention to people. We’re not going to be talking about say, novel writing specifically. But you could be writing a novel, it’s certainly a goal of mine next year. Mm. But whatever writing it is, we’re here to support you around the writing process generally, the community, the support. We’re both writing teachers by background. We’ve told you about ourselves in that landing page (waitlist page). I’m a coach and teacher and Beth also is mentoring and many years’ experience as a teacher. So together, we bring a fantastic skillset too. And of course everyone who joins brings their wisdom. That’s what I love about group programs. We met through a group program, didn’t we Beth?
Beth Cregan:
And we really feel like this will be a co-creation. We will set that structure up and use what we know in that space or share what we know in that space, but it really will be created with everybody and what they bring into that program as well, which is really exciting.
Terri Connellan: It is absolutely. So yes, we hope you’ll join us. So as I said, we’ll both put a post up today kicking off the waitlist. So any questions feel free to pop them in now, or we can pick them up on our respective Instagram profiles. So look forward to connecting with you and to going on a Road Trip with you, writing away.
Beth Cregan: Totally!. And have a great day and any questions, please shoot them our way. We’d love to answer them. And we’d love to see you on that wait list so that you can get more information as it comes into the world. Yeah. Bye.
Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:
We hope you’ll join us!
You can get on the email list here and find our more about us and the program here:
Welcome to Episode 6 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Writing Together and in Community.
In this episode, I’m joined by Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me – writer, writing teacher, mentor and workshop leader, and soon to be published author—and my morning co-writing buddy and collaborator for the upcoming Writing Road Trip kicking off in late January 2022.
You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Welcome to Episode 6 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 20th of December as I record this and we’re steadily marching towards Christmas. I hope things are not too frantic for you and that you are able to find some quiet spaces in your days and time to read, write and reflect on the year that’s nearly complete and the year to come.
I’m thrilled to have my friend Beth Cregan join us for the podcast today. To introduce Beth:
Twelve years ago Beth combined her passion for creativity with her great love of writing to launch her business, ‘Write Away With Me’. Since then, she’s presented hundreds of writing workshops to inspire and encourage young writers to find their voice, develop their writing skills and connect with their inner storyteller. Her work has branched out to include presenting writing workshops for adults of all ages and stages and taking on the role of a writing mentor. She believes writing simply makes life better so in 2017, she set out on a journey to write a book to inspire teachers to develop a daily authentic writing practice in their classrooms. Soon to be published in 2022 by Hawker Brownlow Education, writing this book was a transformational experience both personally and professionally. Beth lives in Melbourne.
Beth and I have a special relationship as early morning co-writers. We’ve never met in person but for many months now as we’ve both written our books, we’ve got up to greet each other at 5:30am or 6am, connecting via Zoom and dawn writing virtually in 25-minute bursts. In between we have the most fantastic chats on writing, editing, publishing and life. Today we will be chatting writing, co-writing, editing and working collaboratively as part of our wholehearted journeys. I am so excited we can share some of the joy and insights from our early morning private chats more publicly with you today.
Beth and I are also collaborating and co-hosting a community writing program The Writing Road Trip that kicks off in late January 2022 with a free 6-day challenge on your writing identity followed by a 6 week course to shape your Writing Roadmap and then a 6 month community program. If you’d like to join us or are just interested to find out more, head to The Writing Road Trip waitlist link in the show notes on QuietWriting.com. Or you can find the link in my bio on Instagram where I am @writingquietly and of course all the links to connect us with both are in the show notes. Before we head into the podcast, warmest wishes to you for this festive and holiday season. I hope you get to send time with loved ones and curl up with a good book or two. Thank you for listening and connecting with me, Quiet Writing and the Create Your Story Podcast. It means so much to me. So now let’s head into the interview!
Transcript of interview with Beth Cregan
Terri Connellan: Hello, Beth. And welcome to the Create Your Story Podcast. And thank you so much for your support of me and my book Wholehearted, especially as morning writing buddies.
Beth Cregan: It’s a pleasure to be here and it’s a pleasure to be here in daylight hours!
Terri Connellan: Yes. We usually catch up first thing in the morning at about five thirty or six in the dark. So yeah, so it’s good to connect and we’ll talk about that more as we go through. We’ve had lots of conversations about writing, editing, publishing, and so much more on our journey together so it’s great for us to be able to share some of those conversations with people today. So can you, as a starting point fill everyone in on how you got to be, where you are, what you do and your new book.
Beth Cregan: I trained as a kindergarten and primary teacher. So that was like 35 years ago and after I’d been teaching for a few years, I had a gap year in Asia, and I wrote every day. So I’d always loved writing, but it wasn’t so much of a daily practice. And then while I was away, I had that experience of making writing really part of my life.
So I came back and taught, but when I had Molly, my first daughter, I decided that perhaps I’d like to reinvent myself a little. I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t teach, but I wanted to do something a little bit different. So I started to study professional writing and I loved it.
I loved everything about it. I loved being a student. I loved talking about writing, but I think perhaps the biggest part of that was that I worked out you could teach someone to write. Before then I had the experience of capturing my own thoughts, but I hadn’t really discovered that I could capture images and thread them together and make stories.
And when I realised that somebody could teach me to do that, I had that understanding that I could teach somebody also to do that. So I rather than go back into the system, I taught for a company that ran programs for gifted kids and I taught writing. So I did that and various other jobs along the way.
Then finally in I think 2010, I’d had the experience of setting up a kinder and I’d worked there for three years and I loved it. But it was where everything came together because I had the experience of running a business cause a kinder is a little like a business. So suddenly the writing and the running a business and the teaching all felt like they combined and I decided to start my own business.
So that was Write Away With Me and then I started to teach classes after school. So I had a core group of kids some of who’d been in my kindergarten groups came through into my writing classes after school. So that was lovely and then I started to also go into schools and teach writing workshops.
And from there, I also started to teach professional development workshops for teachers. So those three: my private teaching, in school teaching and working with teachers became the core of my business and my writing. And so I blogged about that and wrote newsletters. And from there, that was the start of the book really.
At first, I felt that creativity was being sidelined and it was very structured and very much based on assessment and data. And I wanted kids to have a chance to be creative and to fall in love with writing. And I had those kids after school who were kids that loved writing. And I just wanted to bring that spirit into schools. So that was my start and the book has changed and it’s something a little bit different to that now, but my original intention and it’s still the intention is to re-imagine how creativity could fit into the actual structure of our program as it stands now. So I think that answers all of those things.
Terri Connellan: Fantastic. Yes. It’s a big question, but in there, I’m just seeing writing as this thread that goes all the way through your teaching, your professional development with others, your own professional writing, learning, realising you can teach writing and then, sharing your knowledge from all that in a book. So, I love beautiful body of work focused around writing and around sharing the love too in there.
Beth Cregan: And I think writing has been my solid companion as a kid, as a teenager. Recently I spoke to, the year twelves at my school and they have a journal as part of their year 12 program. And I went back under the stairs and through all my boxes and found the journals that I had in year 12. And I realized that it’s just been there all the time, not always at the forefront, but al ways there.
Terri Connellan: It’s something that I connect with too. So it’s that idea of a body of work or ingredients or passions that keep popping up, but they take different forms that I think is something we connect. So we both have a passion for writing. We both have a love for writing, and one of the ways we connect around that is writing in the morning together.
So, Beth was already doing Dawn Writing and invited me to join. So at five thirty or six o’clock, depending on the time of year, we hop up together. I live in Sydney, Beth lives in Melbourne and we work via Zoom virtually to write. It’s a great joy. isn’t it Beth?
Beth Cregan: It is and it started so organically. It was the beginning stages of lockdown 2020. And I was talking to Sandra who joins us as well, it was just a let’s jump on and sort of connect with each other. And then that night, I just thought I’m going to do this Dawn Writers idea and invite other people to come and write with me because I felt like I really needed a structure.
I was needing to move on with my book and locked down and a house full of people all working at different places and the distractions. So it had this lovely start to it, not much thought just, sort of an idea in the shower and I had no expectations for how that would look, I think.
And, how it looks now is exactly the way it was meant to be, just a very small group of people, greeting each other at dawn and giving each other courage to work on our own projects.
Terri Connellan: It’s fantastic. And it’s been such a support for me in getting my book written and published and and I know we’re going through a similar journey, and we’re able to share experiences of particularly going through those hard, sloggy times where it feels like it’s endless, cheer each other on a bit.
Beth Cregan: Absolutely. I don’t want to say, I don’t think my book would be finished now if it wasn’t for that, because who knows how I would have wrangled it into shape, but I don’t think it would have been as joyful as it’s been and I don’t mean necessarily the writing experience has been joyful, because I think we’ve had lots of conversations about that. It’s not always joyful, but I think the conversations about writing that we have are joyful.
Terri Connellan: And I think the way we do it too, which, for people listening is like a 25 minute Pomodoro type, set a timer. And so we’re co-writing, but doing our own writing. And then at the end of the twenty-five minutes, we stop and have a chat. And often that might be what’s surfaced in the morning pages or what might be the focus of our work. So all those conversations are really helpful too. I think they take away the isolation.
Beth Cregan: They take away the isolation, and they become part of your writing identity. I think over the last, probably 18 months, at least we’ve been doing it consistently now, haven’t we? I feel like some of my real aha moments and real formative moments about writing have come from those conversations because there is something about the dawn and sort of breaking open and you’re breaking open your own day.
And there is a sort of a vulnerability about that energy. And I feel like some of the biggest things I’ve learned about myself and recorded are really important, foundational, to how I think of myself, came from those conversations.
Terri Connellan: I find that too. I’ve always got a notepad here and I’m often writing down things that might be something you say, or you recommend or a podcast. And, I think it’s too the rhythm of checking in regularly, you develop ongoing dialogue perhaps.
Beth Cregan:My book is for primary teachers, ultimately, although for any teachers at work and teach writing, but one of the chapter is about writing routines and rituals. And we don’t think always in terms of that in a primary school setting, but it has been really instrumental… it’s a rhythm and a routine for me to wake up and do a series of actions and to come in to the space where it’s usually quite dark. I only have a lamp. I do things very much the same each morning. And it means that when I sit down to do that, my brain signals, this is time to… if it’s journaling, then this is time to reflect. Or if it’s writing, this is time to think things through, this is time to brainstorm ideas. So that routine and that rhythm of, same time, same place. It’s always you and I, but other people come in and out of that as well. It’s amplified for me how important, routine and ritual is to really any sort of project that you’re working on.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think it’s that idea of where practice, writing practice or practice anything, and routine come together. But routine can sound dull and boring but that idea of practice and craft showing up to the page.
Beth Cregan: It does feel like in its own way, it feels like it’s sacred. And I think we’ve talked about this recently, that it feels somehow, it’s not religious or spiritual experience, but it is the regularity of a form of worship with words really and turning up to do that, making space to do that every day or five days and the days that we give ourselves off to sleep in.
Terri Connellan: And I know we often get to the end of that, it might be an hour and a half might be an hour, whatever we choose to do and say, well, that’s great. We’ve done the important thing for the day. And I think it gives you a bit of a headstart.
Beth Cregan: It does. On the days when I don’t do it, it feels like a slippery time in terms of settling down and getting work done. I’ll find myself sort of nine 30 and then suddenly I’ll do something else and it’ll be 10. Whereas when I have that start, I do go and do something afterwards. I usually have a bit of time out, cause it’s quite focused, even if you’re doing morning pages, it’s a real focus sort of time. So I usually take my stuff away, but when I come back, I’m in that zone of ready to go. I’m not all over the place. I’m not scattered. When I don’t do it, I have that feeling of being a little bit scattered and it takes me probably an hour or more to settle into my day. Whereas I think we’ve already done that by the time we have breakfast. That’s a bonus.
Terri Connellan: Yeah, I totally relate to that. And I think it’s that accountability to each other, but accountability to the practice too, which is great. Yeah. Some people have asked us about how hard it is to get up early and write. And, I think we’ve found that it’s not so hard, the more you do it. So what would you say motivates you or makes it easy to get up?
Beth Cregan: Well we were talking recently at your launch about morning and evening. And I think I wasn’t perhaps always a morning person because I know when my kids were little, they used to go to bed quite early and I used to have the evening where I would do creative things or whatever I was doing.
But I think over the years I’ve become a bit of a morning person. So the actual getting up naturally isn’t that difficult, but in 2016, I got acquainted with Ayurveda and they have a real teaching about greeting the day and various routines that you do. So I was already in that frame of mind. So getting up wasn’t such a problem, but I do think that once you start to wake up early and you do it consistently, you do find yourself going to bed earlier. I find when I get out of the habit of it, I think over January, when we had a break, I found myself going to bed at like 1130, midnight and sleeping in.
But when you actually get in that habit, you naturally can’t last long past 9: 30, 10, and then I just have everything set up, ready to go. I’m not a crazy organized person, but I usually spend a few minutes getting my teapot ready, getting my drink bottle, ready, making sure I’ve got room to balance a computer somewhere. I have my Ayurvedic routines that I might do already in the one spot. So I find that makes it easier. Just to not be scrambling for things. So I never have that sense that I’m belting down to turn on the computer in the nick of time. I always feel like it’s a smooth transition.
Terri Connellan: What I’m hearing from you is what I’ve learned too, and also working with clients is it’s what you do the night before really helps with the morning. The morning routine starts with the evening routine. And it was funny, we only talked about it at the virtual launch, but I do the same thing. I always make sure my clothes are there. I make sure the kettle’s filled up, the cup’s there. It’s got the teabag in and I just know there’s a set number of things and in a way that’s actually lovely. It’s nice. Cause you don’t get distracted. You’re just there to do that. And I said to you, I think this morning when we were talking that if I don’t have the accountability of you being there, I might get up early, but I tend to faff around. I think it helps to focus.
Beth Cregan: Yes, it does. And I think when I don’t have somebody else there, I don’t do the twenty-five bursts in the morning. I do sometimes do that during the day by myself, but in the morning I don’t tend to do it. And I think that does sort of lead you, the 25 minutes is a really good container for pouring things out. So yeah, I’m a bit the same. If I’m by myself, I tend to go through all those steps but I don’t settle as easily, I think, because part of the routine isn’t quite there.
Terri Connellan: For sure. So tell us more about your book and where you’re up to in the writing.
Beth Cregan: Well, as of today, I had the last 800 words or so, which were the conclusion. And I don’t know if you felt like this, but I felt a bit teary today just finishing off that last 800 words, because this piece of writing, this project, has been such a companion through lockdown. And we haven’t always seen eye to eye and it’s sometimes been a bit of a love, hate relationship, but we’ve had each other’s back the whole two years or close to two years.
So it felt great to start piecing that bit of writing together but I realized that I’d left it for a while and I think it was because I just didn’t want to sign off on that container that has really held my work and my life together, cause I haven’t been able to work in schools consistently.
So I’ve just finished that and the rest of the book has just undergone the first full structural edit where you move everything around and check your arguments and all those sorts of things. So, I know you, and I always say this that, you finish one part and you go, oh, that’s that? And I finished my book and then you find that you haven’t quite finished your book. So I feel like I’ve been saying I finished for a long time. But I think the gritty writing part of it is finished or close to finished.
And the book is about the importance of developing a daily writing practice in your classroom. It has prompts and ideas and activities, whereas we tend to work on our own, generate our own, writing projects. It’s not dissimilar in a way to what we do. I think when I first started it, I saw it very much as being the way to balance standardized testing. And in the re- writing cause I’ve actually restructured the whole book from the original manuscript, I had to really try and find a way to make it doable for teachers. So it’s really about how you could do a daily writing practice in that first 15 minutes of the day or, or some time in the day. So how you could actually make sure that your kids had that opportunity to interact with writing away from obvious assessment and how they could learn to develop their own processes.
Because often in a classroom, you’re providing one way of doing things. Whereas this is very much about kids learning to appreciate their own creative processes and have the sorts of conversations that we’re having in the morning, that form writing identity that get them to think about how they interact with writing.
So I guess my goal is to have a group of people that don’t see writing as something that happens in a classroom. That they see, like we’ve discussed, writing as a thread that will run through their lives in all different ways. That would be my greatest wish for that book.
Terri Connellan: What a brilliant goal to have for your book and to bring all your body of work as a teacher and a writer to share that love.
Beth Cregan: I have a love affair with capturing ideas. I like to think. And so I think writing is a way of capturing ideas and playing with words and I do really love that. I think writing makes life better, much better. And I think we could solve a lot of problems if people not necessarily wrote at 5:30 in the morning, but had time to think on paper every day.
Terri Connellan: I totally agree. And it’s made all the difference in my life and it’s something I’ve shared about in my book too. Of my 15 wholehearted self-leadership skills for women, writing regularly, is right up there whether it’s for clarity or sorting things out. It doesn’t have to be a book.
Beth Cregan: It’s a tremendous thinking tool. I think some people do leave writing at school and they finish and they think that that’s that. But if you can write for an audience of one, you don’t have to see yourself as writing for other people. You can be a writer that just writes and thinks on paper for yourself. And I think if we could get our politicians in the habit of daily writing practice, I think we’d see some real changes in Australia.
Terri Connellan: I think we might too. It makes a huge difference. So we’ve shared the ups and downs through the long haul writing processes in working on books and we both experienced challenges in the editing phases that we’ve talked about. My journey of writing was that I found the editing so much harder than I ever thought it would be. How about you? How did you find that?
Beth Cregan: I had a slightly different experience, I think, because the book was picked up by a traditional publisher and the publishing house was taken over by another company. So when it was taken over, I was then given the feedback that the book as it stood needed to be restructured. So I basically had this manuscript that I had to come up with a different plan and then find bits of the book that fitted into all of those sort of chapters.
So it was a real puzzle for me. And I think that’s where Dawn Writers made such a difference in those early days, because it really took a lot of courage to get in and try and piece this together. So the editing, the structural edit and checking that everything’s matched and that I put the puzzle back together in the right way has been… yeah. I love words, but it’s been a slog, an absolute slog
Terri Connellan: I’ve used the word slogan because it is. And when we had a discussion, some in the morning and some in the virtual launch, other words come up like tenacity and resilience, but yes, when you going through it, it definitely feels like a slog.
Beth Cregan: And I think culturally, we expect things to move. We live in a fast world. We expect things to move quickly and everywhere around you, you do have information, ideas, like, write your book in 30 days. And there’s this expectation that writing can be done quickly if you’re productive. And if you put time and where I found that I did all of those things and it was slow.
And so you have to learn to be happy with progress in whatever way it takes. I don’t think I understood that unfortunately to the very end. I think in one of the conversations that we had in the morning, we talked about slow writing and that wasn’t that many weeks ago. And I think the penny dropped that my expectation of what I could do and what actually played out were quite different. So instead of being happy with where I was in the process and being in the moment, I was always berating myself for not being faster and not being more productive or not being this or not being that. And I think it might be easier the next time because I’ve had that experience of my expectations and the reality of being quite different. That’s a real mindset. Any long haul project, I think you have to really put your mind to it.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And it’s patience, that getting frustrated with yourself because it’s not finished or it’s not this, or it’s not, that can pop up quite a lot. My particular version of that is that I made it quite tricky for myself cause I wrote this huge draft and then fortunately working with Penelope Love who received it as a friend and an editor helped me with the developmental editing to realize there was two books in there. But then we had to separate them out and then it was working on the two at one time. So I certainly didn’t make it easy for myself in that.
Beth Cregan: So sort of similar in that your manuscript was a bit of a puzzle. That first manuscript was a puzzle to put together.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. When you said puzzle, I went, yeah, that’s, that’s exactly what I experienced because what we actually did was went through and color-coded the bits that went.. We did that to the whole manuscript. Blue was the main one, pinky color was the second color. And then there was another color for things that perhaps didn’t quite go in either. It really was a puzzle.
Beth Cregan: I used to worry about this last year, and I don’t think too much about it now, but I used to think, parts of this are going to get missed. And they’re going to sort of fall off and I’m going to want them back. I don’t worry about that so much because I feel like any parts that are missed, I’ve got all the manuscripts. So they’ll be repurposed in some way, but it seemed important to me last year that I couldn’t lose any of it.
Terri Connellan: I felt that too. I have a document. I just put all the things that didn’t go anywhere else there. Yeah. Interesting. So one thing we’ve talked about on the way through was maybe doing a session of how not to write because of all the things that we’ve learned on the way through the journey. It might be nice to share with people, a few things we have learned about what not to do.
Beth Cregan: Ooh, what not to do. One of the things that is significant to my experience and perhaps it would be across genres as well is I think writing a book in the educational space has mostly a particular structure. And I didn’t understand that. I wasn’t quite aware of that. And I think perhaps if I’d have taken a step back early days and looked at what that structure might be, I perhaps wouldn’t have chosen the way that I chose to approach it.
However, the flip side of that is that I got to say it exactly how I would have said it and it has been possible to make it into a different shape. So I think rather than spend too much time worrying about it, perhaps people should jump in and know that if it’s not quite the right outline, or it’s not quite the right structure, it is possible to change, that’s the upside of it. But I feel like if I had perhaps done that, I could have saved myself a lot of time. Definitely.
And I also used an editor because I intended to self publish. I also used an editor and whilst the editor, a freelance editor, her work was fine, but I think I also needed someone who had worked in that space and who was in educational publishing. So I think that would have also, probably given me a few more clues early on that the structure might not have actually worked. So I think being a bit specific to your genre, perhaps looking at what other books in that space might look like and the structure they use and looking at who edits in that space, sort of narrows down, builds your field of expertise.
So I didn’t do that. I really sort of threw it up and did it my own way, which now I can say that it all worked out for the best, but I think I may have saved myself some time and heartache perhaps.
Terri Connellan: And as you were talking, that really resonated with my own experience – that idea of writing that very long draft and then realizing that there were two books. I had always thought about a workbook, for example, but not probably something that was a distinct, separate book that had quite a lot of content in it too. So yeah, similar learnings. Maybe it’s just part of the writing process that you create a bigger thing and you do your own way of working and then you work out what the piece wants to look like.
Beth Cregan: You could spend a lot of time and energy researching and fitting into a structure and mate, you may have to change it any way. So I think you have to start don’t you, you just have to make a start and trust that the material, if you have a strong enough connection and a strong enough will to birth it into the world, that piece of work will find its shape. I think you just have to trust that. Did you think too much about that – what you might have to do to shape it when you were writing it?
Terri Connellan: Not in the way that it happened, but I did have a strong sense of what it looks. I’ve shared on social media, the mind mapping. And I had a structure pretty early on about what I wanted it to look like. And I had that idea of being layered and spiraled, which is in there. But I think it had to evolve itself. Like you said, it had to incubate and it had to grow and I had to have life experiences to bring to it. And we’ve both read the lovely Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process, where she talks about it, like bread and, the idea of the dough rising, where sometimes things have to almost take on a life of their own before, when they know what to do with them.
Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. So I think what else would… I know we’ve had so many conversations about this and I think perhaps because I’ve just finished that last little bit of writing I’m in that optimistic space where I feel like I did everything, everything happened as it should, not necessarily that I did everything right. But everything happened to plan in some shape or form. Well, what other things have we talked about that we would do differently?
Terri Connellan: I think probably the structure is the big one that we’ve both experienced. Sounds like that’s something that you learn from experience. The next book you write will be different to the first time around or second time around. Probably some of the things we’ve talked about, the idea of that mindset around the long haul, long haul creative mindset, and just being a bit more patient.
And then the other thing too, I think, is just realizing the value of writing community andco-writing. But it took me a long time. On my journey, it’s been very much about realizing that writing is much more collaborative than I thought it was.
Beth Cregan: Yes, and I think that’s true. I did work with a mentor originally to start things off and I really liked having that comradery with somebody else. Yes, then it did feel for a long, long time like I was just left to my own devices and it’s lonely to hold faith to something that you’re not really quite sure what the outcome will be. So yeah, I think Dawn Writers always feels like an act of bravery. Community does have that sense of bravery. Doesn’t it?
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I think it’s realizing too, whilst we often write alone, even if we’re writing together you write alone, it’s that idea of realizing that it’s the communities or the connections. We met through a mastermind, through the Gentle Business Mastermind,, which supported me as a community. And I know supported you. So that idea of at least having somewhere where you can just say, well, this is what I’m up to. This is what I’m doing.
Beth Cregan: And we’re invested in each other’s work, you know, I think that’s what you find, that you become really interested in what you’re doing. And I’ve got to see the process unfold for you, which has been highly motivating. So yeah, the value of community and early on, the value of having that community is really important.
Terri Connellan: I wish I’d had it a bit early on in the process too. It’s been a big learning for me about, co-writing and writing community and how important it is.
So, we’re both writing teachers by background. Interestingly, I also started as an infant’s/ primary, teacher and then went into adults and then I worked in the adult literacy area. You took another path, but, I’m interested as a fellow writing teacher, how being a writing teacher helps you with your own writing?
Beth Cregan: I haven’t had afterschool classes now since the beginning of 2020, but prior to that, I would run pop up after school classes based at schools. But I also had my own group of students that followed through over years, many years, and they were my writing group really, because I would write with them. Anything that I learned at all, was interested in, I took to that group. I’m forever grateful to those parents because although I would at the beginning of the term plot out a program, but the parents were incredibly trusting of what we would achieve during that time and how it would play out.
So I had a lot of freedom. Like one time, I was reading Natalie Goldberg about walking meditation. So I decided that we would do walking meditation before we started writing. So all the things that I learnt I could bring and share in community. And although these writers were aged eight to 12 and 13, they were equally as skilled as me. So I did have that sense of meeting with another group of writers every week. But also when you’re teaching, it’s never the same. So you’re drawing on what the kids give you and you’re learning things as you go.
Once we were sharing bits of writing and talking, we ended up just talking about the power of verbs and how a verb really transported the meaning of the sentence. And it had to be quite specific. And it led me on this personal journey about verbs. So I felt like anything I learned, I brought to my classes and anything that came up at those classes became my points of curiosity. So it’s this wonderful circle of giving and taking.
I did a podcast a while ago and Ellen, who, you know, introduced me as a teacher at heart. And I thought that’s very true. I think teaching and writing have always been so important to me and it’s the teaching I learn and I never feel with teaching that it’s just something that I’m giving.
I feel even when I step into a classroom to do a workshop, I always come out knowing that I’ve discovered something new or I’ve seen something new or something has happened that keeps me company on the way home. Some student had this little piece of writing about the book of everything. And I mulled over this book of everything all the way home. So, the characters that I hear and the storylines that I get to hear just sort of play in my head on the way home.
Terri Connellan: It sounds like a wonderful dance of ideas and inspiration, imagination.
Beth Cregan: Actually that’s a beautiful image because that’s how it really does feel like, a nice sort of flow between those things.And this lovely sort of movement and choreography, some of which is planned and some of which is just moving to the music.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. Beautiful. So there’s two questions that I’m asking every guest on the Create Your Story podcast. It’s a big question, but just interested in what comes up for people. So firstly, how have you created your story of your lifetime?
Beth Cregan: I think that the beginnings of the story that I’m in now, the phase of life that I’m in now, I think part of the thread of that and perhaps part of the writing, how the writing fits into this too, is that I’m one of six kids. So four older sisters and a younger brother.
And I think when you come in at number five, some of the key archetypal roles in the family are already taken. So we already had the smart one, the super generous, the athletic, the organized. So, I never felt under pressure to do this, but I do think you try and find ways to be different and to define yourself and looking for your voice or finding your voice and being heard in that group is really important.
And I think part of what I do now with writing and what I do with teachers is about finding a voice. So I feel like find your voice has been the common thread in that story line. That’s the plot really, and it’s finding a voice through all these different mediums and elements and relationships and experiences. And I think Morning Pages, and I know that tarot is something. I had Oracle cards, but I think tarot is something that I’ve really seen and read from your book, but seeing you do, and it’s now becoming something that really inspires my intuition. So it’s not just finding your voice and speaking out, but it’s feeding and, and nurturing that inner voice, that voice of intuition.
So those tools, writing, tarot, and incubating ideas for me, gardening, all of those things are about creating something and speaking through the things that you create or the stories or whatever.
Terri Connellan: I love that thread of finding your voice in all that you do and teaching’s a way of sharing what’s important and making a difference too. So, thank you. It’s beautiful. And you’ve touched on some of these. So in Wholehearted, I talk about wholehearted self-leadership tips and we share some passions in those areas, but are there any particular top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women that you’d mention?
Beth Cregan: Well, I know we’ve spoken about writing, perhaps that’s probably that or some sort of daily reflection time. Perhaps for some people that’s not necessarily writing. Maybe that’s painting, maybe that’s reading, but I do think that having some time out and it doesn’t have to be long. Sometimes when we think of self care or self leadership, we imagine we need big chunks of time. And I don’t think you do need big chunks of time. I think you need to just carve out a little bit of space to hear your voice in whatever way plays out for you. Whether that’s in the garden or in the shower, wherever. Just tuning into something other than the world around you is really important to me. Perhaps it is about finding your voice, using your voice, but nurturing your voice as well.
And creativity, I think is the heart and soul of us. And I think everybody’s creative. I think some people practice creativity in different ways and their skills may be more defined in certain areas. But, we’re all creative. That is what makes us different from animals and from various other species. So I think honoring that in some way is one of the best ways that you can make your mark on the world, which is self-leadership. So whatever that is, however you decide to practice creativity and in whatever shape or form, I think those two things, taking some time to reflect and perhaps an internal response and an external response, making something, thinking about something, connecting ideas, all of those things. An internal and an external responses is a nice connection, just a way of responding, a nice response, I think to your day.
Terri Connellan: So it’s like a way of internalizing, but also bringing in like a balance thing. We know too much internal work, not externalizing can be a problem, but getting out and not taking the time to settle and integrate can be a problem too. So yeah, I think you’re right. I think it’s about that balance or of the two that makes a big difference.
Beth Cregan: And in whatever way it works for you. I think we’re spending so much time and we have so much great information at our fingertips about how people all live. And sometimes it looks like other people what they’re doing works so well and we have to try it, but, I’ll never forget when I first started yoga, I had this great teacher Rita and we were all mid pose and I’m not particularly flexible when it comes to yoga. So holding a pose for me, mid pose isn’t a fabulous way to stop. But we’re all mid pose and she stopped us and said, just out of the blue, be your own guru, stop paying so much attention to other voices and listen to your own voice. So I always have somewhere on my desk, ‘be your own guru’, because part of that internal is looking at what you already have in there.
Terri Connellan: And what the truth is for you cause we’re also different. Yeah. Beautiful. I love that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So, where can people find out more about you and your book and the work online?
Beth Cregan: Well I have a website, so the website is WriteAwayWithMe.com and I’m on Instagram also @write.away.with.me which is a blend of my own writing life and my work. I do run programs and hopefully we’ll run programs again in schools once we’re up and running. But I do also run programs for kids online. So if you come to the website and you can have a look and see what’s around. I’ve had a term off, but, I’ll be heading back into doing some online classes.
Terri Connellan: Great. That’s fantastic. And you and I’ve also been hatching up some plans for something very exciting together to offer next year. So shall we chat a little bit about that? So yeah, Beth and I are joining forces to offer I think the experiences of a lot of the things we’ve talked about today. That community support, skills, teaching, coaching, skills we bring together. But also, I know you and I are both big believers in creating a space, creating a container and facilitating. So that’s something with a focus on writing.
Beth Cregan: We had our first planning session yesterday. I was all buzzy by the end of the day. So it’s nothing better than having that feeling. But we’ve talked a lot together and because I’ve had this experience, I’m really keen to explore writing identity and how we view our relationship with writing and how we can build that relationship with writing. Because I know that the experience of working on a book has changed that dynamic for me completely.
I think writing has always been there, but now writing is very much part of how I see myself and that wasn’t always the case. If someone asked me what I did, I probably never said that I was a writer. I probably chose teacher or various other labels. So I’m really keen to explore how we step into that relationship with writing and how we develop that relationship with writing, because I think that makes all the difference to how you then approach writing projects.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think that’s something we’ve both learnt as people always passionate about writing, being writing teachers, working with others, but also going through writing projects and writing longer haul projects like books. So the things we’ll be focusing on are all about identity. And in that to me is a bit around mindset, how we see ourselves, skills because there’s obviously skills involved in writing. But I think both of us are very strong on process, writing process too. And that will be a key part of what we’ll explore.
Beth Cregan: And also the conversations, that’s where the real jewels are. Don’t you think? That ability to share your experience with someone and have them say, oh, I see you, and I hear you. I know where you’re coming from. And I think that has been part of our journey together because we’ve been able to do that for each other. And we have the proof of how that works or how that has worked for us. So, yeah, I’d love to be able to offer the goodness of that to other people who want to be involved or take on a writing project of some sort.
Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And as we said earlier, I think I particularly said, but I think you’ve also mentioned, that idea that I wish I had writing community earlier in my journey. And I think that’s what we can offer too, is that idea of community, how to create community, being a community together and the support. We’ll put a link where people can express interest if they’d like to know more in the show notes. So stay tuned.
Beth Cregan: It’s being currently planned as we speak.
Terri Connellan: Yeah. But I think that’ll be a really exciting space and program for next year for us to share. So thanks again, Beth. It’s been a real joy to talk today.
Beth Cregan: My pleasure. I’ve loved it. And I feel so proud to see your book in the world is like seeing the dream of our mornings in a really tangible way, isn’t it?
Terri Connellan: Thank you. That’s really beautiful to hear. I can’t wait to see yours in the world. That’s going to be a very exciting day too.
Beth Cregan: I think there’s nothing like having other writers invested in your work because it feels incredible to have people who are not just happy for it to be out in the world, which of course everyone is, but to really have a sense of watching it grow up almost.
Terri Connellan: Yes, because it’s a real psychological journey, that whole practical and psychological journey. So for someone to go on that road with you ,on that trip, it’s very special. So thank you for being that for me.
Beth Cregan: Oh and thank you. I just marvel at the fact that one night in the shower, I had this idea and it ended up being so fruitful for both of us.
Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you. I’m glad you had that thought in the shower.
Twelve years ago Beth combined her passion for creativity with her great love of writing to launch her business, ‘Write Away With Me’. Since then, she’s presented hundreds of writing workshops to inspire and encourage young writers to find their voice, develop their writing skills and connect with their inner storyteller. Her work has branched out to include presenting writing workshops for adults of all ages and stages and taking on the role of a writing mentor. She believes writing simply makes life better so in 2017, she set out on a journey to write a book to inspire teachers to develop a daily authentic writing practice in their classrooms. Soon to be published in 2022 by Hawker Brownlow Education, writing this book was a transformational experience both personally and professionally.Beth lives in Melbourne and when not writing or teaching, you’ll find her painting, hiking, rummaging in her garden or in a forest, hugging trees.
If you want to be writer, you must do two things above all: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I am aware of, no shortcut.
On Writing, Stephen King
9 writing books to inspire your creativity
Here are nine writing books to inspire your craft and creative spirit with a taste of what each focuses on.
1. Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life – Dani Shapiro
I love a sub-title and include them all for this list! This one for Still Writing sums up beautifully what this book is all about. It provides vignettes on the craft of writing and living a creative life, day in, day out. The best books on writing take you inside what it’s like to live a writing life, as well as giving you advice and tips for the journey. Still Life takes us through aspects of the writing process as a lived experience structured around Beginnings, Middles and Ends. It’s gentle and encouraging, full of gems to inspire your journey.
Act as if. Act as if you’re a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you it’s okay. Take that shimmer and show us your humanity. It’s your job. (p32)
2. The Situation and the Story: the Art of Personal Narrative – Vivian Gornick
It took me a long time to work out what genre I wanted to write in. This book helped me work out that it was personal narrative. ‘The Situation and the Story’ is a deep-dive on the art and technique of personal narrative. Growing out of 15 years of teaching in MFA programs, it covers examples of the craft of personal narrative such as Loren Eiseley’s magnificent, ‘All the Strange Hours: the Excavation of a Life’ and Beryl Markham’s ‘West with the Night’. If like me, you aspire to write personal narrative or memoir, this is a fabulous handbook for the craft.
The presence in a memoir or an essay of the truth speaker–the narrator that a writer pulls out of his or her own agitated and boring self to organize a piece of experience–it was about this alone that I felt I had something to say; and it was to those works in which such a narrator comes through strong and clear that I was invariably drawn. (p25)
3. One Year to a Writing Life: Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer’s Art and Craft – Susan M Tiberghien
This books is structured around a one year journey through and to a writing life. There are 12 genre-based lessons to deepen your writing craft. They are focused around areas like: journal writing, personal essays, opinion and travel essays, short stories, dialogue and poetic prose. These 12 workshops drawn from over 15 years of teaching combine inspiration and teaching and focus on creative practice as a habit. The idea is that as you work through the 12 lessons, one a month over a year, you shape the habit of your creative practice.
A person who writes has the habit of writing. The word habit refers to a routine, but also to a stole, to a costume befitting a calling. In the same way that a monk puts on a traditional habit, so the writer puts on a traditional habit. As writers we find where we are comfortable and with a stole over our shoulders, we write. (p ix)
4. If You Want to Write: Releasing your Creative Spirit – Brenda Ueland
This is a 1938 classic on releasing the natural writing spirit that is within all of us. It takes a very egalitarian and encouraging stance. Chapter 1 is entitled ‘Everybody Is Talented, Original and Has Something Important To Say and the book continues this theme and spirit. This is such a wise book on writing and creativity, often cited in people’s lists of favourite creativity books. It is heart-filled and conversational in style, inspiring confidence and the ability to write with every page.
I want to assure you, with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time,–no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. (p15)
5. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within – Natalie Goldberg
Another writing classic, published in 1996, Writing Down the Bones is made up of short zen-style reads that focus on freeing us up to write. She focuses on simplifying and streamlining the process rather than adding rules. It’s about voice and story stripped back to their essence as a starting point for creativity. And it’s all very common sense and practical, instilling confidence. If like me, you’ve acquired years of other people’s voices and corporate styles, this book is a palate cleanser and reminder to get back to your own writing voice, style and message.
Writing practice embraces your whole life and doesn’t demand any logical form: no Chapter 19 following the action of Chapter 18….It is undirected and has to do with all of you right in your present moment. Think of writing practice as loving arms you come to illogically and incoherently. (p13)
6. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft – Stephen King
Another writing book that often appears as a favourite on the art and life of writing, this classic by veteran author Stephen King is part memoir and part writing class. Very down to earth, it’s honed from years of sitting down to write and creating book after book. King takes the fluff out of writing practice and encourages us to as well. His memorable and direct advice on adverbs has stayed with me: “The adverb is not your friend.”
If you want to be writer, you must do two things above all: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I am aware of, no shortcut. (p145)
7. Your Life as Story: Discovering the “New Autobiography” and Writing Memoir as Literature – Tristine Rainer
Tristine Rainer’s The New Diary was a seminal book inspiring my creativity and is featured in 36 Books. Your Life as Story continues the theme of life story as writing practice and creative source. Tristine Rainer’s specialty is autobiography and in this book she focuses on the evolution of autobiography as literature. The techniques for its practice are outlined including: genres of the self, truth, finding your voice and elements of story structure in autobiography. It’s a valuable read on the craft of memoir and autobiography for aspiring and practicing writers in this field.
If you complete even one short autobiographic story or essay, you will know the delight of creative alchemy, of making a gem out of life’s dross. (p16)
8. Writing the Natural Way: Using Right-Brain Techniques to Release your Expressive Powers – Gabriele Lusser Rico
You might know of Betty Edwards’ book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. This is the writing equivalent of that book and focuses on using right-brain techniques to release creativity in writing. Published in 1983 and structured in a course-based way, the strategies are a useful addition to your creative tool-kit. Practices include: clustering, recurrent, re-vision, image and metaphor, creative tension and language rhythm. With insights on how the brain works throughout, it’s a great book for inspiring confidence in new-found ways especially if your left-brain critic is a very loud and powerful force.
Just as two heads are better than one for solving problems, so two brains are better than one when it comes to writing naturally.
9. The Successful Author Mindset: A Handbook for Surviving the Writer’s Journey – Joanna Penn
Joanna Penn’s The Successful Author Mindset focuses on mindset and the long-haul creative journey of being a writer. Writing is a lonely journey with self-doubt and your inner critic ever-present in shifting ways. This books covers the landscape of mindset issues writers encounter. It offers suggestions for recognising and tackling these issues, based on Joanna’s years of experience. Including excerpts from Joanna’s diary over her years of writing and self-publishing, it focuses on the emotional journey of being a writer. It’s about creativity for the longer term and riding the emotions over time.
Embrace self-doubt as part of the creative process. Be encouraged by the face that virtually all other creatives, including your writing heroes, feel it too with every book they write.
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