the power of creative writing

I have been a writer for the last 55 years, and I am just publishing my 6th book, with another one waiting to go!

The difference is, unlike so many, I am totally blind. I am also a permanent wheelchair user due to cerebral palsy and I am partially deaf. But as I usually say, apart from that, there is nothing wrong with me! There certainly isn’t anything wrong with my mental processes. How did I develop the desire to write? I think it’s because I have spent so long listening to the radio, especially BBC Radio 4. I love the power of words, and the construction of sentences, and trying to get them right.

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It’s all very surprising because at school, in my early years, there was no expectation of me achieving anything. It was only when I became totally blind and went to a school for the blind that they worked me really hard and discovered that I had a good mind. For which I have always been eternally grateful. During those years in the late 60s, I listened to lots of Shakespeare, good poetry, and we had an English teacher who was a brilliant reader of Ian Fleming novels. At the end of every English lesson, he read from some of the James Bond books.

So my love of words was fuelled by a good academic education. At the time of taking my O-levels, I had been totally blind for little more than a year. When I started writing and preaching—because I am also a fully accredited Methodist local preacher—I used to write my sermons in Braille, transcribing them from a tape recorder. It was difficult and laborious, but I got there in the end. People were impressed by my preaching style.

I never had any difficulty in communicating, and now when I write and deliver lectures, the same situation applies.

People said that I ought to put my story on paper. But the question was how? I’d used tape recorders and braille for my writing but if I was going to take this work seriously I would need some form of support. It came in the form of a grant from Access To Work who pay for me to have secretarial assistance, who also allows funding for lecturing, driving me to and from important appointments and research. To the tune of 30 hours per week. This help is absolutely invaluable and I could not function without it because my pain levels are so high that I would not be able to manage a qwerty keyboard and using a braille computer would be difficult due to the pain. So I have had assistance in this form for more than 13 years. And thanks to their help, this is what I have been able to continue to achieve. And I prey that it will go on because I want to work until I drop. Retirement is not in my vocabulary. I love the freedom of expression and the achievement of putting words on the paper. Something that I hope many of you will feel inspired by my experience and do the same.

So in 1980, my first book, Undefeated, was written. That covered the period from my birth up until 1978. Then the director of the counseling organisation that I belonged to, the Rev. Dr. Denis Duncan, who was also a prolific writer and preacher, asked me to write a continuation of my life so I could fill people in. Dr. Duncan not only preached but wrote a regular column for the Saturday Telegraph.

By then, I had met and married my darling husband, Ralph, who was a wonderful support to me. He was not academic at all, but he could turn his hand to almost anything. He was superb at looking after me and giving me the means to reach out to others. I can remember one amusing time when I was asked to give two lectures by Dr. Denis Duncan: the first was on bereavement and the second on sexuality and disability. I joked that it was the first time I had spoken about sex after death, which caused quite a chuckle with the audience.

Inner Vision, my second book, continued the story and detailed my marriage to Ralph and some of the accomplishments we achieved together. Not least, we raised funds to create and build three holiday houses for people with disabilities, their families, and their carers. The Lin Berwick Trust worked for almost twenty-five years on this project and achieved great things.

I helped to raise, along with the rest of my team, £2.5 million, which was truly fantastic. All this was great fodder for writing because I was meeting and writing about many interesting projects. I don’t believe that you can write entirely in a vacuum. You have to be out there, experiencing life and doing your best to put what you see and hear on paper.

That issue is not wholly dependent on sight. I believe that blindness can enhance what you write. My third book, God’s Rich Pattern—originally published by SPCK, now under my care—is a story about becoming blind and coping with life in general, including the trials and tribulations I faced. Out of all my books, God’s Rich Pattern is my favourite. Its subtitle is Meditations for When Our Faith is Shaken. And believe me, my faith has been shaken many times in my 74 years.

It is a book about faith, the certainty of God’s love when our faith is shaken and we do not know whether God is with us. In fact, there are times when I have felt that God has abandoned me, yet deep down I know that I am loved and cared for, and I am aware of God’s presence, holding and supporting me through my life. The prayers and thoughts within this book say a great deal about faith in general, and you will also get an insight into my character.

As I have said, life has not been without its problems. Since my husband Ralph died, I have had to rely on 24/7 live-in carers. The ones I have now are brilliant, but there have been times when the quality of care did not meet the required expectation. So book number four is called On a Count of Three: A Guide for Carers. This is a very short book, and I am now proposing to do a rewrite with more practical items on disability. It is a small book, but I believe it packs a punch. If you are going to write things of a factual nature, you have to be honest. Otherwise, there is no point in trying to flower it up, because people will be able to see through what you write if it hasn’t been written with integrity.

My fifth book was one that mattered to me greatly because it was the story of my mother, Alma. The book is called Nobody Does It Better Than Me: The Story of Alma. It is a 289-page book about my mother, her family, and my life with her. It is not the easiest read, but it is deeply honest. In writing this book, I found it very difficult at times because the issues within the book were emotionally challenging. You will understand when you read it. But it is a book that I am proud of nevertheless because I felt proud to have written honestly about the issues, whether it offended or pleased people. I had to tell the truth as I saw it. I trust that it will go far and do much for the understanding of disability and the pressures it places on others. One wouldn’t want to rely on others so much, but sadly there is no choice in certain matters. This, in turn, creates a level of frustration that sometimes has to be felt to be believed.

After such an inspiring yet difficult book, I decided to make my next one, book number six, light-hearted yet thought-provoking. It is coming out on 11 October 2024 and will be available from Amazon or any good online bookstore near you!

It is called God and Our Dirty Socks and covers marriage and all the family issues within it, as well as redundancy, bereavements, and many more things in between. I hope that you will enjoy it, and more importantly, I hope you will buy it because it is another expression of my writing skill. I absolutely love putting words on paper, but more importantly, I love getting the first carton of books from my publisher. There is nothing more wonderful than holding the finished book in your hand and realising that this is another expression of your achievements. It is a book of prayers and thoughts that I hope will help you on a night when you can’t sleep, troubled by a certain course of events.

Book number seven is written and ready to go, but I will save that for another day. For all of you who are visually impaired and want to write, use a tape recorder or computer to get your thoughts on paper.

For me, it doesn’t matter if you are visually impaired or not; the desire to create should be your utmost priority. If it is written with feeling, the words will come. So I wish you all happy writing, and if your work becomes a book that you can publish, then I wish you the very best of luck. Please look out for the advertisement for my latest book, God and Our Dirty Socks. I hope people will have a certain curiosity about what the book contains.

God bless you all,

From Dr. Lin Berwick MBE

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