When I decided to start a blog about writing, the most logical place to start seemed to be how I myself got into it. Writing for many is something that they just stumble into, the act like quicksand that won’t give us a chance to get away. Writing was like this for me; seemingly forgotten once or twice when I was a teenager but always storming back to the forefront eventually. So this post is just to give you a little insight into how I got myself into the practice of sitting alone and obsessing over word counts.
The Initial Spark
As a child, I was an avid reader and I would obsess over my books. I used a butterfly stamp to mark out the first page so I knew which books were mine in case someone took one. I kept tallies in the back of how many times I’d reread a book and I always rearranged my bookshelves (the future librarian in me I guess!)
However, I never made the connection between these books and the writers behind them, not until I was in primary school. I took part in a Young Writer’s project through school when I was nine. These still go on today in the UK and are competitions where children can see their work published in books. My poem, "My Hamster," was published in one of these books. I was ecstatic and for the first time I became aware of a person behind the stories I read.
There were lots of small things in-between, a few months wanting to be a songwriter like Violet in Cayote Ugly, but the next milestone was ‘The Ghost in the Attic.” This was a short haunted house story we were set in school when I was around 10. This story became my life for the weekend: I lived and breathed this story and my Dad helped me. I remember him opening the dictionary at a random page and making me choose a word I didn’t know. I then had to include that word in my story. When my teacher had marked it, she read it out to my class, all my classmates actually being scared of something I’d written, and then sent me around to the other teachers in school as she said they all needed to read it. Yes, she was probably indulging me, but at that age I had no idea and I’d never been so proud of anything before in my life. This had such a huge effect on me.
After that, writing is something that gets moved to the back burner. I started at secondary school and had to handle what seemed like piles of homework for the first time. Skip ahead to Year 8 where I am around 13 and studying Romeo and Juliet in english. In order to better understand the story, my teacher made everyone rewrite two scenes from the play but set in modern times. I chose a scene from early on in the play and then one of the dramatic scenes at the end. So began the first time I got way too carried away and tried to write a novel. I was obsessed and I would spend all my time handwriting the story in a pukka pad and highlighting the chapter titles. I called the book "Intertwined" and I did actually manage to finish it, more than I can say for a lot of my projects afterwards.
However, around this time I lost a close family member and forgot all about writing. Again, it was an English teacher who brought me back, setting us a descriptive piece of writing for our coursework. We had gone over and over different techniques to describe a day at the beach or a walk in the forest. But me being me, I got carried away and instead wrote a sort of short story which I always wish I still had a copy of. It was about a man looking out at the horizon as the world is about to end and him remembering the love of his life and how she was tortured and killed before his eyes. Yes, my teacher did keep me behind after class to ask me if I was okay after she read it. I said I was and she told me I should keep writing in my spare time because I had a real spark for it. I remember this being the highest praise for me and being incredibly proud that someone else saw in me this writing skill that I dreamed of for myself.
Idea Factory
Though excited from my teacher’s praise, it had come at the start of my GCSEs which lasted two years. I am an extremely anxious person who puts a lot of pressure on myself to do well so writing went out the window again while I focused on revising. This continued through college as well, by far the hardest part of education for me. I was surprised when I got to university that it wasn’t half as difficult as college had been. University was when my brain finally had a bit of the pressure loosening and then came the ideas; novel after novel and more. I wrote more poetry at university then I ever had before and had my first proper story ideas, though I found these too intimidating. All these ideas I wrote down, first on paper, and when it became apparent the ideas weren’t stopping anytime soon, I moved them on to a one note document and started keeping track of them on there. I recorded every idea but wrote practically nothing, saving my writing time for essays.
Putting the writing first
Once I graduated, I got my first proper, full-time job at a school as a librarian and teaching assistant. I was so excited to have a real job, but also happy I wasn’t in education. Finally I’d have time to write because there were no essays to get done. But I was wrong. In actual fact I worked a lot of hours for crap pay and by the time I got home and ate, I was ready for bed. As you might imagine, I did not last long at this job. As I have mentioned, I always put a lot of pressure on myself and once education was out of the way, that pressure moved over to writing. I became more and more sure while in this job that I wanted to be a writer and that I needed to make time to do it. I would write at weekends, but I also had a youtube channel, wanted to see my friends and was in a long-distance relationship. In the end, something had to give and since I hated working there and the pay was rubbish, it was the job. I started looking for a job where I would be able to build time into my day for writing.
Finally I found the perfect one. Only drawback was that it was as an au pair in Switzerland. Anxious little me had never done anything like this, going to live in a random country where I knew no one, to do a job I’d never done before. But I’d have loads of time to write while the kids I looked after were at school. I began telling all the people I loved that I wanted to be a writer. This was something I had always kept like a dirty secret but now I needed to tell people, wanted the accountability. And so even though I was scared, it was a no-brainer and I started the process of moving to Switzerland.
The Writer is Born
Switzerland was the best decision I have ever made when it comes to writing. As you have seen throughout my early life, writing was always at the mercy of other things like exams or jobs. For the first time, I went to Switzerland with the sole purpose of writing. I even remember at one point having a conversation with myself when I first got there to say "okay you have the time now, you have to write. If you leave Switzerland without having written and finished a novel, you can’t say you want to be a writer anymore."
This, I think, was a little unfair and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Writing was really hard at first and what I found was I needed to work on the smaller things first. I found for the first time that actually I write best in the morning, the earlier the better. I started reading craft books and watching people talk about writing on YouTube and through lectures. I wrote more poems and played around experimenting with writing. When I’d spent this time, which was around 6 months, I started writing a novel. However, this again wasn’t easy. My attempts were halfhearted because I’d never done this before and so I accepted any time sat at the desk typing as writing. The blessing in disguise was when I lost the whole thing (seemingly). I still had my notes and some written stuff so I started from scratch writing the book again, but this time I was so much more driven and I had direction. I found the original lost novel in my iCloud storage a month or so later but decided to carry on with writing the new version. I finished the book at the end of November and was so happy; I’d done what I came to Switzerland to do.
So I put the book away for December, as that’s the advice everyone gives, and worked on other things until January. I pulled the draft out in the New Year thinking a month was enough space but I couldn’t do it. I was back at square one again, because I’d learnt all these things about writing, but editing was it’s own beast and I wasn’t ready to face it. I kept trying, and I assume I made some progress but I’m not sure. Early on, the February I think, an idea blasted into my head and the whole first draft was written by March 31st. It is to this day the project I’m most fond of and I want to be my debut novel. I haven’t cracked the editing formula yet but I know this is the best thing I’ve ever written.
And once I'd written it, I was able to call myself a writer.
Pick up a copy of my debut poetry collection, Slamming Doors and Empty Drawers, now on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MYRFYQ1/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_X4F770HZFP10QVXTQDP2
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