This autumn I’ve spent a lot of time with will writers.
In September I gave a talk called The Person Behind the Paperwork at the Institute of Professional Willwriters’ quarterly training, to a room of more than a hundred will writers. A week later I gave it again to the Surrey region of the Society of Will Writers.
The idea behind it is simple. When someone dies, the will survives. The deeds survive. The photographs survive. The person usually doesn’t. We keep every document and lose the voice, the laugh, and the way they told that one story at every family gathering.
Will writers sit with people at exactly the moment they’re thinking about what they’ll leave behind. What surprised me was the questions. Nobody asked why anyone would want a film like this. They asked how much it costs, how far I travel, whether there were leaflets they could give their clients, and how to mention it without it feeling like a sale.
Since then, a will writer in Devon has asked about bringing Everseed to her county, another has raised the idea of films in Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati, and I have more regional talks booked into the new year, starting with Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire in January.
If you’re a will writer and you’d like me to give the talk to your group, or you’d simply like a chat about how a film could sit alongside the work you already do, I’d love to hear from you.