Reflecting on 2024
My friend and Writers’ Group member Emma Jefferys always encourages a ‘Ta Dah’ list, a list to help you realise what you’ve achieved, and how far you’ve come. The antithesis of a ‘to do’ list, by writing one in December, it’s a chance to reflect on what I’ve worked on this year. And I thought I’d make it public!
As many of you know, sports writing is my favourite and I love it all the more if my subject is female (check out my side hustle We are Girls in Sport). I started the year interviewing another Brit in California for Style Magazine, NBC’s Premier League show anchor, Rebecca Lowe and ended the year chatting to Team USA’s Paralympic cyclist, Jamie Whitmore (in Style Magazine early next year). In between I wrote about cricket, the Paralympics, March Madness and had the pleasure of talking to Team GB triathlete Jess Learmonth for Family First Magazine and ‘the girl with a hijab on her head and a ball at her feet’, Lipa Nessa for The Sweaty Betty Foundation.
Lipa Nessa courtesy of The Sweaty Betty Foundation
Thank you to Georgina Probert and Megan Wiskus-Lim for commissioning me to write many of these pieces for Family First and Style Magazine respectively. I’ve written about health and wellness for both and learnt a lot. There are four foundations for good health, I’ve learnt - sleep, moving your body, eating as well as you can and social connection.
I’ve written more copy for websites in the last 15 months than ever before and I’ve learnt that project management is essential when there are many contributors - I now offer that to keep new website projects on track as well as writing the copy. To see some websites I’ve worked on, check out Zoe Knight Interiors and Ethical HR Solutions.
Many of the blogs I write are for ghost writing clients so can not be shared! One blog I wrote this year did go ‘viral’ in the client’s local community and we think it was used in a national newspaper’s piece on the same topic. It was fun to see it popping up all over socials! Here’s one that I can share and that’s about the rise and rise of girls’ cricket around the UK and for others, check out my blog pages here and here.
Image courtesy of Unsplash
The Writers’ Group continues to grow and I love to see the collaborations that happen within it. We have had a presentation from Dominic Potts on SEO while Steph Caswell spoke to us about writing non-fiction and her famous 30-minute sprints! You can read more about it here.
On a personal note, I’ve added two more US states to those that I’ve visited (Arizona and Oregon) and tried a six day trip to the UK - do not recommend, very tiring. I’ve dedicated myself to the gym three times a week and started pickleball which is a very popular sport over here - I love it! I’ve continued ‘reading my bookshelf’ but sometimes I read new additions to said shelf or from other people’s shelves, such as my son’s English class text, ‘No Country for Old Men’ by Cormac McCarthy and my friend’s ‘It Ends with Us' by Colleen Hoover (you know, it was a movie in the summer).
Autzen Stadium, Eugene, Oregon watching college football.
If any of this piques your interest and you’d like to learn more, please do contact me. What would be in your ‘Ta Dah’ list for 2024?