Introducing: Writing Visionary!
A new newsletter about writing and how to be a visionary - medieval or modern
Do you write, or like to hear about writing work-in-progress? Do you want practical tips for writing, organising your time, and finding motivation? Are you an academic working on your career vision, and/or like to learn about the past? Are you interested in medieval stuff, especially the mystical, or unexpected stories about medieval women? Answer yes to any of those questions: Then this newsletter is for you.
But first—
What is visionary? What is a visionary?
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the adjective and noun visionary as describing something or someone ‘having or marked by foresight and imagination,’ ‘disposed to reverie or imagining,’ and ‘able or likely to see visions’. Today we most often use this word as an accolade—positive praise for something that’s ahead of its time, someone thinking totally outside the box, a person doing exciting things nobody else has thought of. When we talk about medieval visionaries or visionaries in the past, it’s most often about someone who has revelatory experiences, visions sent from some kind of divine source, whatever religion they are in. They see things with an inner vision the rest of us can’t see with our outer vision, our eyes.
At the same time, the dictionary gives us some contradictory, negative definitions: ‘existing only in imagination’, ‘incapable of being realized or achieved,’ ‘one whose ideas or projects are impractical.’ In other words, a visionary can dream up impossible things and they can fail in reality: not every visionary idea comes to fruition, not every visionary person actually ends up changing the world or even their industry—maybe not at first.
I love that both these contradictions are true!
Visionaries, whether medieval or modern, have to fail a bit before they succeed. People who think outside the box often fall down when they first leap off the edge! But then scrape themselves off the floor, get up and try again—and keep on believing in their own vision for the future.
Medieval visionaries existed on a knife-edge of being either possessed by the devil, mentally ill, or actually touched by God. Every day they fought their own doubt and the doubt of people around them. But the ones who wrote, they knew deep inside their visions were ‘true’—were from and for good, and worth writing down for others to read.
That’s what this newsletter will be about: how do we keep on writing when we’re afraid of failing? How do we stay true to our vision?
How do we keep our inner vision in sight as we try to describe our ground-breaking vision to the world? How can we learn from those people of the distant past who were brave enough to write their impractical vision of the world, their wild visions of the otherworldly, and make books that still survive hundreds of years later?
Every Friday I’ll be posting about a blend of these topics: how to write, how to motivate yourself to write or do anything hard, how to have a vision for your (academic) career, how to ‘self-envision’ (whatever that means! mostly reflecting on who you are and how to be happy), and last but not least: MEDIEVAL VISIONARIES.
I’ll be bringing in my twelve years of experience as professor of medieval British literature as well as many years of leading seminars on motivation, time management, writing tips, and career guidance, for early career academics as well as established researchers. Expect lots of concrete tips!
‘Writing’ for this newsletter focuses mainly on non-fiction and academic writing, the kinds I do, but my tips can also easily relate to fiction writing.
You’ll also get sneak peaks into my work-in-progress: a general audience book, currently titled VISIONARY: THE WOMAN WHO CHANGED MEDIEVAL ENGLAND. This book tells the story of how St. Birgitta of Sweden, the fourteenth-century visionary, took England by storm, becoming the most popular female author for several hundred years. I’m signed with an agent and just about to dive into securing a publisher.
So the newsletter is also about writing ‘VISIONARY’ the book itself over the next year: Come along for the ride, I can guarantee lots of ups and downs, struggles and successes, all the unexpected joys and expected frustrations of a real-time book writing process! No pressure on me, haha, since being a visionary is also about failing!
All subscribers will get the weekly Friday posts, short and pithy insights into these topics. Paid subscribers will get the podcast version so instead of looking at the screen you can listen to me reading the posts aloud, with bonus commentary, maybe while you’re making dinner or walking to work. Paid subscribers will also get work-in-progress sneak peaks of my book as I write it. If you’re a ‘founding member,’ you’ll get a signed copy of the book when it comes out. (I obviously like to give myself external accountability—now I really have to write this thing!)
Thanks for coming along for the ride! And bring some others along :-)