Me, In Brief

Less brief | Further particulars

Hi, I’m John-Paul Flintoff.

I’m a writer, mostly, and a performer and illustrator. I live in London.

I wrote A Modest Book About How To Make An Adequate Speech, How To Change The World, and some other books.

You should join my monthly newsletter, Everyday Writing.

I run a paid membership called Special Projects, which provides moral support and a bit of financial freedom, in return for discounts and exclusive access.

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Less brief

Writing

I’ve published six books, in 16 languages:

• A Modest Book About How To Make An Adequate Speech (rhetorical guide-as-memoir, Short Books)
• What If The Queen Should Die? (historical novel, Unbound)
• The Family Project (creative guide, Faber & Faber)
• How To Change The World (non-fiction, Macmillan / The School of Life)
• Sew Your Own (memoir, Profile)
• Comp: A Survivor’s Tale (memoir, Gollancz)

I worked for 15 years as writer and associate editor on some of the best newspapers and magazines in English. At The Financial Times I was staff feature writer, and was closely involved in setting up the current Saturday magazine.

I moved from there to a contract at The Sunday Times. I’ve worked for The Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian and Observer (and some others, but you get the idea).

As a journalist I have written many kinds of stories. I particularly enjoyed immersive storytelling, about working as bin man, executive PA, scuba diver, poet, taxi driver, tailor, gardener, ice-cream salesman, hairdresser, assistant undertaker, bit-part player in pantomime, waiter, illustrator, high-wire window cleaner, photographer, very amateur boxer, karaoke singer, rat catcher, and more.

I go into this, in more detail, in the Further particulars below.

Performer

My latest book about public speaking. I wrote it because I’ve delivered a lot of speeches and workshops – on four continents, to as many as 5,000 people at once – and I find the subject fascinating.

I have written elsewhere on this site about how I had a breakdown, and went into psychiatric hospital, and how – while I was there – I persuaded my psychiatrist to let me out just so that I could travel hundreds of miles to deliver a keynote speech at a corporate AGM. This is one of the (true) stories I told my friend Jaime (now also my agent), causing him to tell me I should write that book about public speaking.

It’s a good story, but at the time I didn’t want to write a book about this, because I feared that publishers would only be interested in some kind of (excuse my language) bullshitter’s guide to manipulating people. Happily, Jaime encouraged me to write a book about speaking honestly, from the heart, and found a publisher who was keen too.

Going back a bit… I only got into speaking in the first place because I was invited to talk about books I’d written. And in 2012 I stumbled on the work of Keith Johnstone, pioneer of theatrical improvisation. I only intended to write an article about him, but then I went on a training course, and it changed me forever.

I sometimes teach others what Keith taught me.

Artist

Portfolio here: https://flintoff.org/art/artist-portfolio/

I always wanted to be an artist. And I won a big prize when I was 14. But then a school teacher discouraged me – I see now that he was probably just having a bad day – and I decided to go into writing instead (as if writing is easy!).

In the pandemic, having finished work on my book, and with all my public in-real-life events cancelled, I started to get serious about my art. As well as selling prints, and doing a few commissions, I drew two series of portraits, and started to illustrate books.

I also started running drawing workshops to increase resilience in pandemic, create a sense of togetherness, and improve people’s storytelling.

As well as illustrating, I make books, design T-shirts and once created a range of tableware.

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Further particulars

This page is being overhauled. Please excuse the mess.

If you are still reading, great! You must (like me) be interested in how other people tick.

Down here in the depths of this page, I’ll attempt to describe things I wrote up there ^ in slightly different ways, in hope it’s helpful. (To you, but also to me, because I like finding out about myself).

One way I like to do that is by drawing up lists, and charts, and just staring at everything till a pattern emerges.

Took me hours to put that table together. But even that tells you something about me: I always want to know how stuff works. I enjoyed every minute working out how to create it using Textpattern.

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What’s Happening Now

What the heck I’m up to

Present

Latest Posts

• A Prayer To Silence The Inner Critic
• What's On My Home Screen Right Now?
• Newsletter Challenge, June to July 2021
• Design Your Own T-shirt (Like I Do)
• 96,000 Reasons To Write By Hand

The Newsletter Challenge, June-July 2021.

Giving talks, mostly about speaking (ooh, a bit meta, that).

Writing and illustrating my next book.

Drawing portraits of the artist (ie, me) into classic art of the past.

Recent Past

Launched an ADEQUATE podcast.

Walking from London to Canterbury, entirely on Google Streetview, as a Desktop Pilgrimage.

Virtual Artist in Residence during lockdown: drawing people online, in various communities.

Ran a month-long course in public speaking, on Zoom.

Future

Researching my next book, a non-fiction journalism-y thing.

Preparing for these upcoming Public Events

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Footnotes

¹ Getting Fit In Six Weeks, The Times.
You can download a PDF: File: Six Weeks To Change Our Bodies The Times.pdf [645.22 kB]
Category: press-cutting-pdf
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