Co-founder Tony Earnshaw reflects on how blogging became a vital part of his writing life – and how those weekly posts have now grown into a new book.
A range of writing activities compete for my time, rather like a bunch of children. Also, again like a bunch of children, they each add interest, spark ideas, improve the final outcome. My blogs have fallen into a pattern that works for me – a prose section of musings on life, the universe and everything starts the blog and a poem rounds it off. The blogs may be about my other activities, or they may touch on world events, politics, faith, the curiosities of life or, like a play, characters and their needs and motivations. They may be humorous, angry, philosophical, playful. Recent blogs have included a number of reimagined fairy tales. Like any writing, they tend to tell a story.
There are differences between playwriting and blogging of course. When I sit down to write a play, I have characters to play with, personalities, conflicts, motivations. The same is true of a novel, the difference being one of scale or focus. A play is more concise; a novel presents a bigger canvas. Writing poetry is more focused still, but does not necessarily involve a range of characters or a story arc. A poem may embody these things but they’re not a given. Writing a blog is different again, and my new book A Love Letter to the Planet – And the people on it grew out of the blog.
I started blogging some years ago after being prompted to do so by a friend who thought it was an essential for a writer. I’m not sure she was right, but I’ve certainly found it both useful and satisfying. After a few years of sporadic blogging, I signed up to Substack in early 2024 and committed to writing every week, so far successfully. So successfully in fact that many of my regular readers have been demanding a book of the blogs, and now the book is out. Does all this impinge on my other activities? In the sense that there are only so many hours in the day, yes, but in many ways each activity sparks off something elsewhere. Back to that bunch of children. And it’s a good way of avoiding writer’s block – if something isn’t working, I just write something else.
What speaks most strongly to the cross-fertilisation of ideas is the journey of the poem that ultimately gave this book its name. It began life during a Damn Cheek Zoom evening for Valentine’s Day in lockdown – an intimate, creative moment shaped by constraint and connection. From there, it evolved as part of the development of our community show Passion for the Planet, taking on new layers of meaning through collaboration and performance. It later appeared in a blog, reaching a wider audience in a different context.
Across each of these iterations, the piece absorbed new perspectives and resonances, until it became the clear choice – not only as a standalone work of writing, but as a title that encapsulates the spirit and themes of the book as a whole.
Pick up a copy of Tony’s new book on Amazon
To mark the launch of A Love Letter to the Planet – And the people on it, join us on Friday 17 April at Oddfellows Hall, Dorking, for an evening of readings, conversation and stories, as Tony Earnshaw talks to Damn Cheek Co-Artistic Director Darren Cheek. Book your tickets.