From Little Things Big Things Grow

One thing that I get occasionally complemented on is my writing. People write and let me know how they appreciate my writing style.

Initially this surprised me, because I do not consider myself a naturally gifted writer. In fact, quite the opposite.

Reading and Writing was always a bit of a nightmare for me. I had an elder sister who was extremely talented when it came to English. She naturally ‘ate’ her way through literature and flew through reading the Famous Five whilst I plodded through the Secret Seven. Its not that I couldn’t do it, but I could never do it as well as my older sister and that pained me.

Come secondary school, though proficient in English, I still had this niggling sense of inferiority, exacerbated by the teachers at school who consistently expected more from me, “because my sister is so good….”.

Then, the thought of writing a school essay on any topic terrified me. I did not feel I was incompetent, I knew I was incompetent.

Funnily enough, my essays reflected this skewed view of my own ability.

So I did what I normally do when faced with that type of scenario.

I gave up.

It's a strange old world, and the clock turns around and for one reason or another I started blogging about testing.

Me? Writing? My totally creative family were to say, slightly surprised.

But, I’ve been blogging for about 3 years now and it looks like I’m not that bad at writing after all.

And I am proud of this turnaround, in both my writing skill, and my awareness of my ability. Its demonstrates to me, what I can do if I just give something a go.

In fact, I have been asked and I’m in the process of contributing  to a book on testing, as well as collaborating with James Bach on a book on IM Coaching.

Its a little victory, but I think an important one.

From Little Things Big Things Grow  is based on the story of The Gurindji Strike and Vincent Lingiari. It describes how the Gurindji people‘s claim sparked the Indigenous land rights movement. The protest led to the Commonwealth Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

The Act gave Indigenous people freehold title to traditional lands in the Northern Territory and the power of veto over mining and development on those lands. In 1975, 3,236 km² of land was handed back to the Gurindji people.