Writers’ Rough Drafts is a podcast hosted by Elisa Doucette, Founder and Executive Editor of Craft Your Content; a business that aims to do the unthinkable – make writing a less lonely process. They offer group courses, as well as one-to-one support on writing and editing projects from website copy to novels. The Craft Your Content website is also a wonderful resource in itself. As a frequent visitor to the Craft Your Content website, and an avid listener of the Writers’ Rough Drafts podcast, I jumped at the chance to talk all things writing and creativity when Elisa approached me a few months ago.
Listen to our podcast episode here.
Elisa’s incredibly flattering introduction:
Heidi Gardner is a scientist, researcher, blogger, entrepreneur, and activist. While her “full-time gig” is as a research fellow at the Health Services Research Unit at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, after receiving her bachelor’s degree in pharmacology and her doctorate in participant recruitment, she has a lot more going on besides her fascination and love affair with science and improving participant trial experience.
This year, Heidi embarked on an international odyssey as a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust fellow—visiting art installations, chatting to professors and female scientists, and reading tomes upon tomes worth of articles and literature in North America, Europe, and Asia—to find interesting and unique ways that people share scientific research and results so it is more accessible to, and engaging for, the general public. A regular blogger herself, she updates her site with posts not only about her work and pursuits, but also her life as a woman in science and as a human on planet Earth. Which is part of her “side hustle,” an Etsy store and ecommerce brand called “Science on a Postcard,” a fun project that helps to see science in a new light.
From the show notes:
What You’ll Learn About Writing:
- Why you need confidence to break writing rules
- The importance of finding gatekeepers and peers who are “on your team”
- How blogs can serve as a great place for a “brain dump”
- Why we should tap into our creativity and retrain our brain to think more creatively, even if you think you’re a “noncreative” person
- How you should find specific sources, information, and experiences to share that no one has written about before
- Why not only being creative but being able to explain parts of that creativity to others often bring you more collaboration and readers
- How we, as writers, can try to write more humanly and less pretentiously no matter what industry we’re in
Mentioned in This Episode (Links and Resources!):
- Etsy website, Science on a Postcard
- Winston Churchill Memorial Trust
- National Portrait Gallery
- Elisa’s piece on her writing process and the scientific process
Heidi R. Gardner 