This week I am sharing an idea I had whilst spending Sunday
tweeting!! Anne Cooper shared a link from a US Website. It was a
wonderful account by a nurse about her clinical experiences. It was well written
and extremely moving. I started thinking about the stories shared on Twitter
and Molly Case’s recent triumph with her poem at RCN Congress and I wondered
whether it was time UK nurses shared their stories.
Nicola White a writer in Scotland has been a “writer in
residence” at the School of Nursing at Edinburgh University. Her experience has
shown what a diverse range of stories nurse have to tell and what rich learning
there can be from paying attention to what folk are saying.
The link Anne Cooper shared was originally from a book of
Nurse’s Stories and when I discovered this I had the idea that maybe UK nurses
could do a similar thing. For some time now I have been composting the idea of
writing a book (a small one) about my journeys in nursing. This task has often
felt daunting and I have not got far with it but collaborating with lots of
other wonderful folk feels much more my thing.
I went to Kate Evans’ book launch this week in Scarborough,
at the rather wonderful Edith Sitwell library, and that got me even more fired
up about this project. I met a long time
hero of mine Linda Finlay and she so understood my PhD failure that I really
felt my plight had been heard. I am one of the case studies in Kate’s rather
wonderful book and her analysis of my writing block has been both troubling and
empowering. See here for a link to Kate's blog
So I have suggested the idea of a book out on Twitter and
have had quite a lot of interest from folk offering their story. I found time
to write an outline proposal and feel it might be a project that might see the
light of day.
If you are reading this and what to share your nursing story
then let me know. I don't think folk need to write a lot but we do not want it written well. You might need to practice writing your story and I am happy to help craft it into a meaningful narrative. Don't be scared and don't think you don't have anything worthwhile to say - you will have and others might want to know about it.
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| BOOKS!!! |
I have just realised that I have made a career out of getting off at the wrong stop! A great analogy. Where do I sign up? I want to write my story.
ReplyDeleteSue - I have been thinking about A Year of Compassion - 365 stories. Not sure if that resonates but thank you for your courage and for being the catalyst for written word enabling essence of nursing to be reclaimed Andy
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