Hello curious friend, I’m Nici, a freelance content writer, copywriter and editor living in London, UK. I’m climate curious. I like to write about the climate crisis, what businesses can do to help prevent it, and what we as individuals can do to make the earth a better place to live. I’m still educating myself and I don’t know it all, trust me. But you can join me on my journey to explore the beautiful complexities of it all.
I’m just returning to the world of freelance content writing and copywriting after taking a year out to raise my baby boy, Robin. By raise I mean, watch his big sister show him all the naughty things he shouldn’t be doing around the house. But here I am, back at the desk with a renewed sense of curiosity about the climate crisis and what we can do to prevent it. I’ve always cared about the climate, in fact I believe most people do, but as is the nature of life there are often other priorities or problems that get in our way. It was only once I had children that I started exploring the nuances of the issue, madly Googling at 3am what these changes to the climate will look like for us, and, more positively, what we can do to prevent it.
The main thing I wanted to talk about today, as a way to start discussing my thoughts about the crisis, is how it’s okay to talk about the crisis and not have all the answers. The hardest part of exploring the climate crisis is talking to friends and family about it. I think there’s this sense of being a hypocrite if you’re not already zero waste and carbon neutral in every part of your life.
We live in a world where the systems are against us; where the structures that make our world go round and the economies grow are designed to be against nature and harmful to the environment. It’s not just hard to be environmentally ‘perfect’ within these structures, it’s almost impossible. There’s danger in waiting until we can make all of our actions and behaviours in life not harmful, it will never happen. We need to start bit by bit, with a conversation, with whatever tiny action, whether that’s switching energy suppliers or making all our cleaning products zero waste. To start somewhere is to make a big difference, so just start. You’re not a hypocrite if you talk about going vegan but you’re still buying plastic coated food when you’re in a rush, or if you buy ethical clothes but still shop at supermarkets. Let’s open the conversation and start talking, no matter what stage we’re at in our climate conscious journey.
And on another note…
What have I been doing lately? Since returning to work a few months ago I’ve created website copywriting for an independent opticians and a heritage music studio in Soho, I’ve edited interviews for an arts and culture magazine and I’ve helped a business coach write their part memoir, part business essay collection. I’ve also joined a business networking group for parents who run their own business and I’m halfway through a personal development course on the climate crisis with Common Earth.
What I’m looking for next? I’d love to work on some blogs related to sustainability or the climate crisis and do more ghostwriting work helping others tell their personal or business story. Let me know if you have an ear to the ground!
You should check out…
This thoughtful piece about parenthood and the climate crisis from Josie Long called What Next? on BBC Comedy of the Week, where she talks about feeling like a hypocrite but taking action anyway: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0cfmbkz
Being a freelancer often involves working long hours.
Just for a moment, I’d like you to shut your eyes and think of anything but white rabbits. You must not think of white rabbits! Now open your eyes. I bet you saw lots and lots of cute little white bunnies bouncing around your inner mind, and the more you told them to go away, the more they bred. Hundreds of tiny little white cuties hopping around. It’s the same with any thought. If we tell ourselves we must not think negatively, or if we to force ourselves to have a quiet mind, we will just increase the chatter.
Thoughts are powerful and often believable. However, they are only thoughts. When you say to yourself, “I absolutely, totally must have that piece of chocolate cake”, you’re falling victim to an opinion, not a fact. You can choose not to have that cake and become a slim and healthy being. Maybe this isn’t such a good example. Chocolate cake is of course extremely important. 
Helen Ellwood is a writer, artist and occupational therapist, with training in psychotherapy and mindfulness. She is interested in the subtle dividing line between fantasy and reality, and in the fluid nature of experience. 
I’m Nici, a freelance copywriter and editor based in London. I love writing about making writing accessible, mental health issues, art careers and tips to run your business better. And I LOVE editing full-length novels.
Curious Things is me and the excellent poet Harry Jelley. We make interactive performances, often for museums and heritage organisations, and we also run workshops on topics ranging from event planning to creative writing. We’ve been working together for just over two years (although we only quite recently rebranded to Curious Things this spring so if you’re wondering where any record of us is before then,
We started working together when Harry found a call-out for submissions for Sensored, a one-day festival of work about the senses at Contact, programmed by RE:CON the Young Producing Team. We proposed a show called Empty Kitchen in which an audience of up to six people sits around a table, and we create a restaurant experience for them without using any food – using spoken word, a variety of textures and objects to touch, and pre-recorded video and audio to suggest the taste instead. 
Start-up Stories is a blog series following the lives of inspiration self-starters who are running their own business or project. Its aim is
I love sharing my tips on productivity, writing and start-ups. 
Having bought some coloured pens, I was ready to start. I found the weekly NaNoWriMo sessions inspiring and encouraging. We enjoyed a healthy bit of ‘writerly’ procrastination over coffee and cake, followed by the bouncing of ideas, the sharing of plots and a couple of hours of solid writing.
Helen Ellwood is a writer, artist and occupational therapist, with training in psychotherapy and mindfulness. She is interested in the subtle dividing line between fantasy and reality, and in the fluid nature of experience. 
It’s also a great way to learn the discipline of daily writing. In NaNoWriMo, the quality of the end product isn’t the important part, it’s the taking part that counts. The aim is to get through the first draft of that novel you’ve been wanting to write for years but forcing you to write a large number of words in a short period of time, therefore silencing your inner editor and allowing your brain to work through plot, structure and character building. What you’re left with is a pile of mostly weak words, with some useable sentences in between, and a draft of an outline for a novel you hope to improve in its second draft. So how useful is NaNoWriMo for all those budding writers out there? 
While speeding through writing a novel in a month does not produce expert writing, it does produce a hoard full of new novels, many of which go on to be published or self-published. Its immediate effect is the quantity of writing but the after effect is quality if you continue to work really hard on your new novel. 
Angelique Ibrahim – Founder & CEO of 
I am a certified Prince2 practitioner and use to work in a large corporation. My social life is the polar opposite; I usually hang out in the East & South London arts & music scene where most of my friends are artists, creatives & musicians. I am 
London Army Apparel is still in its foetal days, so, like all start-ups, there is no set routine to my day. The operation is still relatively small and solutions come from creative ideas and resourcefulness rather than throwing huge budgets at anything. I usually read and answer my emails every day. I phone contacts to touch base and get operations moving along. 
I also read constantly. 
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