My Writing Journey

Happy Valentines/ Pancake Day/ Ash Wednesday! It seems that everything exciting about February has been happening this week. I realised last week when I was doing my planning for the next month that I hadn’t mentioned Pancake Day in the blog post. As it is, I hadn’t even realised it was coming up.

So, on to this week’s proper topic; writing. This week I have been on half term. Because of this, I thought I should use my extra time to write about something that takes a little more prep time.

As you guys already know, I like to write. A lot. So, I thought you might find it interesting to hear a little bit about my writing journey.

If any of you are thinking of starting to write, either a blog or your own stories, I thought the perspective of someone who is a little further along that road might interest you. As I’ve been working on this journey for a long time, I know there isn’t much information out there about what you should do as the next step, so I have some top tips that just might help you at whatever stage you are at.

For the rest of you, my lovely readers, this might just make you want to read my first book, when it is published in paperback. It is a murder mystery/romance set in the 1920s, and I would really appreciate some feedback. I thought that a small backstory of where the story came from might interest a few people who perhaps wouldn’t have looked into the genre before.

I can’t take all the credit for this idea though. I am part of a young writers group on Facebook, and this week we’ve all been talking about our stories, what gave us the passion for writing, where our stories came from and the like. I have found it really interesting to hear about different people’s writer stories, so I thought you guys might find it interesting too.

As a child, writing was never something I was interested in. I have been a huge reader all my life, and unusually, some of my favourite novels since childhood have been historically set novels or murder mysteries. As I’ve been getting older, I find myself more drawn to romance novels, but teen fiction or modern chick lit has never been something that I found myself reading.

Also, I have a huge imagination. Probably due to all the books I read. I have always had a huge imagination. When I was a kid, I used to invent whole worlds to play in, and my list of imaginary friends ran into the thousands. Because I loved to play around with different characters, I translated this need to create people in terms of my love of acting. Ever since my first performances as a child, I have loved acting, and I presumed that that was the extent of my creative gene.

It is only as I have grown up that I realise that my love of having adventures with people who I had made up was linked to my writing. I had been telling stories all my life, and all the characters in my head were very real to me. They were my friends, and I never thought of sharing them with the world.

When tasked to write about an experience or do any form of creative writing, I hated it. I’ll be honest and say that. English was never a subject that I loved. It was usually boring in my opinion. It is only as I’ve got into higher education that English has become my passion; as a child, I didn’t really see the point in it.

From being young, my mum was always encouraging me to write diaries, and I just couldn’t do it. They usually went along the lines of “Today we went to the Natural History Museum. It was great. I had a tuna sandwich for lunch. Then we came home, and I had a bath. End of day.” Riveting stuff, right?

As it happens, I still can’t write diaries. Stories about what I’ve done in a day always seem terribly dull. I’m a creature of habit; most of my days are similar to the one before. For example, every Monday morning, my French teacher asks me what I did over the weekend, and every Monday, I say effectively the same thing. Now, who would want to read a diary of 365 days of the same thing? I wouldn’t.

In terms of school, I always found myself (and still do) struggling to follow the brief when it came to creative writing. They would say “write a 500-word story about a walk in the woods” or something equally inane, and I could never think of anything interesting to say. I mean, I would need to know so many more details before I could even write the story. Who was the character I was writing about? Why were they in the wood? What were they doing? Who were they with? Etc…

I remember the last piece of creative writing work I did for school was pretty bad. It was something like “write a ghost story”. And I just don’t write ghost stories. After deliberating for a week or so on what I could write, I ended up just abandoning the brief and giving my story a sort of ambiguous ghostly atmosphere. It wasn’t a high marker, but it was the best I could do.

It didn’t help that whenever I sat down to write something, someone made a comment about my handwriting. Now, for the record, I would like to say that my handwriting is not messy. When I was a child, just because I didn’t write big round letters, my handwriting was written off as messy and near illegible.

However now, my handwriting is respected by everyone I meet. Most of my friends have said that they wished they wrote like I do. It is neat and has a sophisticated look to it. And most importantly, I am proud of it. I write a lot of stuff on my laptop now, purely because I type faster than I can write, but I am no longer ashamed of my handwriting, and I have notebooks with story ideas and random scenes dotted around everywhere.

The idea for my first novel came out of nowhere. It is going to sound completely barmy, but I’m going to tell you all anyway. I hope that you’ve all realised by now that I’m a little eccentric, and if not, you’re going to get that impression now.

One morning (a weekend I think it was), I woke up after a really vivid dream. I was creeped out by how vivid this dream had been and how clearly I remembered it, as I usually don’t remember dreams that well. As I usually do when I have a strange dream, I went down to breakfast to tell my mum all about it.

My mum loved the story I told her. So much so that she said I should write it down. So, I did. And then I told my aunty. Who loved it. And my cousin. Who loved it. And my nana. Who loved it…

It seemed that every person I told about this story that had weirdly planted itself in my brain liked it. Unsure of myself, and what I should do with this idea I had, I decided that I would make it into a proper story. The dream had holes in it that I then patched up a little, and that is where the first important step on my journey began.

As the story developed, and with it the characters within it, my confidence for my writing grew. I began to love writing. Coming home from school to sit with my laptop and write some more about what Alex and Serena had got up to gave me a real rush.

Serena became this beautiful person inside and out, whom I came to cherish as a friend. Her curiosity was something I wanted to develop in myself, and her love for the world made me want to treat people better.

Alex was a bit different; he was the typical tall dark and handsome stranger you dream about. But he became so much more. He became the quietly intelligent and genial person he is that I love to bits, and the more I wrote about both characters, the more I wanted to.

Then, the story was finished. I knew as well as anyone that that didn’t mean it was ready for people to read. Honestly, it had become such a personal thing for me that I hadn’t considered sharing it with other people. I kept in on my laptop, writing and rewriting it until it was my baby and I couldn’t imagine anything being changed.

Once the story was done, I missed writing about Alex and Serena. So what had only ever been one story developed into a full novel and the beginnings of a new story. Which then became another novel in its own right. Which then stemmed off a third story…

It was at this point that I got the confidence up to share my story. I knew that I was getting serious about my writing, so I needed people to read my work instead of keeping it all just to myself. When my best friend offered to read my first book, I bit the bullet and sent it to her. And she really liked it.

Her opinion gave me even more confidence, so I began to share the story around my other friends and family members, and the book kept coming back with good reviews. I was on top of the world, and I knew that writing was something that I could envisage myself doing in the future.

The next step was the leap of faith. The part that I was scared about and didn’t know what to do. There was no one I could ask. I had this novel that I had come to love and had no idea how to share it with the world.

So, as you do when you don’t know about something, I googled it. How to publish your work, how to get people to read your stuff, how to… the list was endless. With no clear idea of what I should do, I tried something that I had been initially scared of trying; asking my English teacher.

My teacher was really happy to hear about my writing and told me that I should publish my work online so that people could read it. Taking the plunge, I published. It was really scary, but I am so happy that I did it. Now anyone can read my work, and the door is open to so many other possibilities.

After that, I started to join writing groups on the internet. Just talking to people who are going through the same things and people with advice about the next step has given me so much freedom and confidence about what come next for me.

And for all of you out there, whether you have written a full book or just have a concept in a notepad in a back cupboard somewhere, go for it. Don’t wait. Show people what you can do. And who knows where it will lead?

I hope this little story has inspired you guys to either carry on your own journey or to go read my work on Inkitt.

Have a great week and I will talk to you all later.

#writing #youngwriter #novels