Who Writes These Guides
Readers sometimes ask how a small health blog actually gets made. There is no newsroom and no studio, just a few people, a shared list of questions and a lot of rewriting. This page pulls back the curtain on the ordinary, slightly unglamorous process behind Wellbeing Notes.
The people
Three writers keep the site going, each under a pen name. Isolde Farrimond looks after the sleep and heart pieces and keeps the running list of topics. Dace Wrenfield writes most of the skin and sun material and the lifestyle articles. Leontyne Harcastle reads every draft before it goes live, trimming jargon and checking that the safety notes are where they should be. None of us holds a medical qualification, and we do not present ourselves as experts. We are careful readers who enjoy turning dense guidance into something friendlier.
Where the topics come from
Most ideas begin as a question we have asked ourselves or heard from someone close: why am I awake at two, why does my partner snore only on certain nights, what is the difference between the stars and the number on a sunscreen bottle. We also look at what people search for, favouring practical questions that have a clear, general answer. Topics that would need a personal diagnosis to answer properly stay off the list.
From blank page to published
- Gather. The writer reads widely around the question, leaning on public health guidance and established reference material rather than forums or product pages.
- Outline. We decide what a reader needs first, what can come later and what does not belong at all.
- Draft. The first version is written in plain sentences, with steps, lists or a small table where they make things easier to scan.
- Challenge. Leontyne questions anything that sounds too certain, too promotional or too vague, and asks whether a "when to get help" section is clear enough.
- Publish and revisit. Once live, a piece is not finished. We return to it when a reader writes in or when wording starts to feel dated.
Things we deliberately skip
We do not include doses, invented statistics or quotes from experts we have never spoken to. We do not tell anyone to begin or stop a medicine. And we try hard not to frighten people: a calm guide that points you to the right professional is more useful than a list of worst-case scenarios.
The nuts and bolts
Technically, the site is about as plain as a website can be. Pages are built ahead of time and served as plain files, which keeps them quick to load and means there are no accounts, comment systems or tracking scripts to manage. Photos on articles are illustrative stock images chosen to match the topic. If you want to know more about what is and is not stored when you visit, our privacy page explains it in full.
Help us improve
The best changes to Wellbeing Notes have come from readers who spotted a confusing sentence or suggested a question we had missed. If you have one, send it through the contact page. You can also read Our Checklist Before Publishing for the checklist each article has to pass before it is published.
From the three of us
A site built in spare evenings
Wellbeing Notes grew out of a shared habit of forwarding each other confusing health advice and trying to work out what it actually meant.
Isolde keeps the topic list, Dace writes about skin and daily habits, and Leontyne reads every draft with a red pen. None of us is medically trained, which is exactly why each piece points you onward.
Isolde Farrimond, Dace Wrenfield and Leontyne Harcastle
The toolkit
What goes into each page
Nothing fancy, just a few deliberate choices.
Careful reading
Public guidance and established references before any draft begins.
A fixed checklist
Every article passes the same short list before it goes live.
Nothing tracking you
Pre-built pages with no analytics, adverts or third-party scripts.
A second reader every time
Whoever writes a piece never signs it off alone.
Questions? Write to us.
We read every message.