Magazine News!

This year, we have been awarded funding from Awards for All to create three magazines for Mums, all about improving your confidence and motivation, inspiring you to make choices that will improve your work-life balance.  We are very excited to have got the first copy printed – it looks great!  It’s packed with inspirational stories from Mums who have started their own business or dealt with the worry of returning to work or training, as well as loads of information that will help you to progress.  We’ll be posting some of those stories on this blog, so don’t forget to keep checking back!

If you’d like a FREE copy of the magazine, please give us a call on 0800 043 2440.  If you have a story you’d like to share, please email cmathers@opsw.co.uk or get in touch through our Facebook group.

If you’ve got your hands on a magazine already, please let us know what you thought!  Comment below, or on Facebook – we’d love your feedback!

Creative Writing

Since starting this blog last year, I’ve discovered that I love to write.  I still have a lot to learn, but blogging on a regular basis is giving me lots of practice and I can feel my writing developing all the time.  I have been thinking about taking a creative writing course, but have been a little reluctant because I don’t really have any ideas to write about.  So when this course popped up on my Facebook news feed the other day, I couldn’t believe my luck.  It’s a one off “life writing” course about putting your memories onto paper.  Two of my favourite books are The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson and Boy by Roald Dahl, both are autobiographies about their childhoods, and they tell such lovely stories in them, I’d love to be able do the same about my own childhood memories.

This course is run by one of my favourite authors, Sophie Duffy.  Sophie has written two great books – The Generation Game and This Holey Life, both of which I have read over and over.  Sophie is one of three authors who have set up Creative Writing Matters, an Exeter based group running courses and workshops on all aspects of writing, including supporting people who are entering competitions, and providing a mentoring service.  Sophie has previously written a guest post for the OPSW blog about becoming a writer, which you can read here.

If you love to read, you should also check out The Reading Room, who run day courses at a beautiful country house on Dartmoor.