Thank God for Dark Angels. Many of you have heard me express this sentiment in various ways over the last decade – it’s made me the writer, the thinker, I am today; it’s influenced my life profoundly in countless ways – and you may well have seen a couple of blogs inspired by Dark Angels events. Today, though, I’m thankful for a rather more prosaic reason – what to write about for the September blog, which somehow crept up on me unawares…
Our notice ‘We’re on holiday in August’ was not strictly true: as many of you will know, I’ve spent most of the month establishing FW in its spanking new offices*. And, while the adventures of Magic 1 the builder, Magic 2 the painter, and Ché the boilerman (a native North Londoner, and not remotely revolutionary) would no doubt provide some light entertainment with your morning coffee, it would be a stretch to make them even tangentially relevant to corporate reporting.
The new Dark Angels book, On Writing, is, however, highly relevant – or will be, once I’ve finished my chapter, which, naturally, is on writing annual reports. Like the other two Dark Angels collective books – our 2016 novel, Keeping Mum, and our recent book, Established, on how companies last in business – On Writing is being written by a group of Dark Angels, and published by crowd-funding publisher Unbound. And, happily for this blog, it launches today! There’s a variety of pledge levels, from the basic e-book to some splendiferous goodies such as the paperback plus a writing workshop with Dark Angels partners. Do go and have a look, and please sign up.
On Writing is not just about corporate reporting, by the way – mine will be one of 12 chapters that together cover many different aspects of writing. Our aim is to write the book on writing for writers of all kinds. At its heart is the Dark Angels philosophy that for writing to be good, it must allow emotion and personality to enter in. The book will celebrate the sheer joy of words – not a phrase one would often associate with corporate reporting, but why not?
And, I can promise you, On Writing will be a great read.
*AKA unpacking a zillion boxes of books, plus a few of shoes. Yes, we’ve finally moved house, hurray, and the new office sofa (turquoise with FW orange piping) is truly a thing of beauty.