Infernal Comms: the Write the Talk blog

Chief Whips, Walnut Whips, and being abusive

Some years ago I was screamed at in an office. It was an open plan office, so there was an audience of around 100 people. There was swearing, personal criticism and a distinct lack of self-control on his part. Like me he was freelancing, but he was more senior and thought he knew better. He had taken exception to something I'd done; by common consent, the problem was his. There were no fisticuffs, but I made sure that the people who recruited him knew what kind of man he was.

I don't know Andrew Mitchell, Chief Whip in the coalition government (today), but he sounds like a man who thinks that shouting at people is an effective form of communication. Unless you're in an environment that's very noisy or there is a grave risk of death, it isn't.

The Chief Whip role is infamous for its bullying nature. It seems to attract individuals who are comfortable with the hectoring and threatening approach to motivation and persuasion. For communicators such as these, it's all about the communicator and not the audience. For them, being effective means conforming to a stereotype rather than being receptive to the impact they are having. Or more dangerously, they see it as an opportunity to reveal their true colours while hiding behind the defence that the world is for grown-ups: the bully's dare.

There's no place for personal abuse in society, whether you're Chief Whip, a football fan, a business leader, or on Twitter. If Andrew Mitchell was Chief Whip in my Cabinet, he would have disappeared more quickly than a Walnut Whip.

It would be good to see our political leaders make an example of a very public offender.

Writing lessons, tannins, and the laws of licensing

It's appropriate that a weekend immersed in all things writing has drawn me back to my neglected blog. (It's not you; it's me. I just needed my own space for a while. Let's not rush things ...)

The Festival of Writing in York is a delectable mix of the dependable and the unexpected. Dependable because it’s always crammed full of valuable workshops and keynotes, the people you meet are warm and interesting, and the time between falling asleep and waking up is never quite long enough.

It’s the unexpected that makes it something special, that moment in a chat over lunch or in the middle of a talk that connects with the sweet spot of your writing racquet. I had just such a moment in my last workshop of the weekend: Andrew Wille’s 4 Elements of Writing. It had been a last minute choice, the option I’d booked months before lost in the befuddlement of sleep deprivation and that last bottle of red.

Andrew's session offered a simple but wildly useful premise: great writing needs a balance of the four elements -

Fire: the guts, energy and imagination of the piece

Water: the heart of the story, the emotional connection

Earth: the evocation of the setting and the action: the visceral and the tangible

Air: the ideas, structure and the language craft

You see, it’s as if Andrew had read the imbalanced draft of my current book and laid out a brief for the next rewrite. Serendipity. And what’s more, he did it in a way that left me with a strong physical sense of that next draft: its earthy heart, rather than just its airy intellect.

It was an hour that improved me and transformed my draft. Which is what York does: it gets inside you and makes a difference.

And to think that 12 hours earlier I was being pursued across the car park by a security guard intent on retrieving the half bottle of wine which had accompanied me ("illegally") from the gala dinner venue. I thought about spinning a story about writerly research, briefly considered making a run for it, and then stared into the abyss of a life of crime. I gave it back.

The Festival of Writing: all life is there.

(And if it's fiction you're looking for, try the Pain in the Art blog.)

Me, myself. Why?

“It was not an auspicious start. The lift containing myself and two French guests was standing stock still on the ground floor, refusing to budge.”

Prompted by a comment from a Twitter friend today, I’ve been scratching my head about the growing misuse of myself in conversation and writing. The quote above is a perfect example, from a published article that I dug out earlier.

There are several factors at work when it comes to this mishandling of me and myself. The first is the uncertainty that exists around me and I.

“My wife and I went to a party. Quaffing two bottles of cabernet in an hour was a record for my wife and me.”

The different treatment of the two is easy, as you’ll see if we just describe my drinking exploits:

“I went to a party. Quaffing two bottles of cabernet in an hour was a record for me.” (and what a record ...)

So, me-fear is an issue. There is also a sense that myself has more formality, that in polite or exalted company using myself is more, well, educated. That’s a shame, because being yourself is more natural, never mind the fact that using myself like this is wrong:

“Myself and my partner are going to see the Queen.”

Quite apart from the impoliteness of going first, using myself in this way is like wearing an overly fancy hat or tie to a royal garden party. Much better to keep it simple and smart. “My partner and I ...”

The final factor at play is the use of myself for effect. We do this when we are highlighting our role in something:

“When the builders didn’t turn up, I moved the bloody slabs myself. I gave myself a hernia.”

This is absolutely fine. Just make sure there’s an I in there somewhere to emphasise.

In summary, use myself when you are doing something to yourself (it’s called a reflexive pronoun – from the Latin for reflect, as in a mirror).

“I hit myself on the head with a lump hammer, knocking myself out.”

If someone else is doing the doing, it’s me:

“My wife hit me on the head with a lump hammer, knocking me out.”

That opening quote would have been better as “the lift containing two French guests and me ...”. Perhaps it was the French company that put our correspondent off.