Writing and Language – My Story

In the beginning there was a little girl who loved books. They were her escape and connection all at the same time. That little girl was me and this is my life story.

You could say that writing and language has been a major part of my life, right from childhood. Family friends would comment on how I always had my nose in a book. The fact is I loved to read, loved words and finding out the names of things.

My mother always used to tell an embarrassing (to me) story of how when I was seven years old and we moved back to Scotland from London, my new primary school headmistress couldn’t believe my level of reading ability. Then later how she exclaimed, according to my mother: “And her English is phenomenal.” That became a family in-joke over the years.

I may only have been seven, but I was a voracious reader of all the classics, and not just those for children like Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, although I did have a rather fine illustrated copy of that.

So you see, that even at a young age I was fascinated by language in writing – prose or poetry, it didn’t matter. I was immersed in classical storytelling for the duration of my most formative years, which I’ve no doubt has stood me in good stead in my future career.

I continued to do very well at English in school, but not just English. Other languages fascinated me. I learned Latin, a requirement for university entry in Scotland back in the day, and I feel that deepened my love of language even more. I loved learning the roots of words and went on the learn a few other languages – French, German, Italian. I started to learn Russian and can get by just about in Spanish, partly because I can recognise the roots of words and patterns in the language.

Had I gone to university I would have studied Chinese, but life threw a curve ball with family issues and I left home. At 17. The girl everyone expected to go to Oxford or Cambridge or St Andrews ended up looking for a job, and found one in a library.

It wasn’t a case of not being clever enough. It was a trifecta of qualifying too young, not qualifying for funding and stresses at home. At the time it felt like survival. So I got a job. It was in a library, of course.

So there I was working with the books I loved so much. The problem was I had seriously misjudged the monotony of a library assistant’s day. There was much dusting, cataloguing and stamping books in and out with the odd bit of excitement when you had to fine someone for not getting their book gack on time.

It wasn’t all monotony. I did manage to peruse the different sections and snatch a few minutes here and there to indulge in some great writing. I found fantastic authors like Angela Carter, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood and Frank Herbert on those bookshelves as well as Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

And so the days passed until I realised I would be gathering dust myself if I didn’t escape the library. Then salvation came over the morning tea break one day. A colleague told me the local weekly paper was looking for trainee journalists and suggested I apply. I did, but I was too late to be considered for that intake. Never mind, the local evening newspaper was looking to take on three trainees that year and before I knew it, I was in.

In those days, trainees were taught everything about the news industry, not just writing. We were sent to college to learn about government and civic structure, law and shorthand – this was way before journalists could routinely record interviews. I did very well and left with my Proficiency Certificate from the National Council for the Training of Journalists plus a shorthand speed of 120 wpm. Unfortunately, nobody taught me how to type. I was sat down in front of a typewriter and told to get on with it.

And that was the start of my ultimately varied career. I got on well, as my journalism tutor had predicted. I rose in the ranks and I managed to make my way down to Fleet Street and then into television, radio, online, communication skills coaching and training, PR and consultancy. I’ve found every step fascinating although often challenging, learning new skills and broadening my experience.

Now there’s a new kid in town – AI – and it’s a whole new challenge.

I use AI in my business every day. It has huge strengths, like mapping out a workflow in minutes that would otherwise take me days to get my head around. But can it write? Well, yes and no. I’ll get into that in forthcoming posts but for now just let’s say don’t expect AI to give you exactly what you want for your copy straight out of the gate. And don’t expect a worthy best selling novel to miraculously appear from a single prompt.

AI requires time and effort – to learn its capabilities and shortcomings and to train it to provide you with what you need on the writing front. Plus, if you’re using AI to write on any scale, you still need someone to edit the text, fact check and carry out quality control. I’d say that’s even more necessary with AI than it was in the old newsrooms I worked in. The LLMs can string words together, but not always in the most coherent way. I’ve seen an awful lot of AI word salad in my time.

That’s changing, though, and right now I’m loving this new challenge. Paradoxically, working with and training AI has reignited my love for writing and language. I can get truly forensic in terms of meaning and sentence structure, not to mention tone and grammar.

I’ll be writing much more about writing and language and AI in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. Because communication and language – words – are hugely powerful and we do well to use them efficiently and clearly.

Meanwhile, check out my SubStack Confessions From a Glitter Ball here: https://rfgb.substack.com/