"I will meander wildly"

Transcript

Hello, this is John-Paul, and this is Voice Notes to the World. And this particular voice note is directed in particular to someone who’s thinking about signing up to my Micro-Memoir course, and has sent me a very, very good question in an email. And it gives me the perfect opportunity to answer just like this, by recording a voice note. And you know who you are, but I won’t give your name.

And you said in your email about the course, “Thank you, I will have my evenings free.” And then you said, “But can I ask frankly, it’s not just a course that’s pre-prepared and I work through like a textbook? There is your human presence to it? To me that’s really important.”

And then you described a bit about your project, and you said, “I won’t fit in a prescribed format, I just know it wouldn’t work for me. I will meander wildly. Thank you.”

Okay, so that’s what you said in your email to me. And why am I sounding quite cheerful about that? Because you’re describing something that I dare say other people might wonder about, and it’s a real problem, it’s a real issue. And so I want to describe how I propose that it will work. It will work.

Yes, I have pre-written all 30 emails, and I’ve done this course now – hang on – last October, January, April, I think it was April May, August. Yes, so I’ve done it four times already, and I’ve changed it every time.

And sometimes towards the end, I have just stopped emailing some people who I knew were not – they didn’t need those last emails, so I just thought, why bother?

But actually I think on balance now I’ve come to the view that I should send you all 30 daily emails anyway, and there’s an overview, so you know what the overall shape is going to look like.

But what I really want to do is absolutely be a presence, a real human presence, for every member who’s doing the course. It’s not a huge number of people, so I should be able to do this.

So I’m going to do a live Zoom on Thursday evening. It may not be the time that works for everyone, but I don’t think that matters too much. Because if anyone has a question, just like your question just now, what I can do is record a voice note and post it on my website, and you and anyone else can hear it.

And what you’ve done is a godsend, frankly, because you’ve asked a question that other people may be wrestling with, and so you’ve given me a chance to answer it, and I’m very grateful.

I realise that my answer may still not be enough for you, and you may think this isn’t the right course, and that’s absolutely fine, no hard feelings. I know you’re very busy. (I’m now speaking to the one human being who actually sent that email, and I know you are very busy.)

So what I propose is, I’ll suggest that you look at the overview for the course. I’ve written an overview which describes each week in a single page, and that will give you a sense of the overall shape.

But of course it’s a creative project. You’ll be coming and going, you’ll be looking at one thing and then moving on to another thing. Some of the emails I send won’t be particularly interesting to you, but in order to keep me from going out of my mind with confusion, I will keep sending my emails in the order that I wrote them.

But I’m very much open to hearing from you. I really hope that answers your question as frankly as you asked it.

Thank you very much. This is John-Paul Flintoff on Voice Notes to the World.

jp at this domain name.