Why and what I write

I think I started writing before school or very close to it anyway.  And once I started writing I just couldn’t stop!  It was the other half to my reading.

Books and I were best friends and I loved reading.  People said if they wanted to find me, they just went looking for a new book, something I hadn’t read.

I will admit that although I loved writing - I had a journal that I maintained on and off and wrote letters to people I knew.  Also, I would go to other people’s houses and write stories and leave them there.

But at 16 there was a day I was struggling with life and everything in it and I wrote a poem.  It was a very long poem spanning all sorts of areas and some pages.  I don’t know if I ever shared that particular poem with anyone or not.  However, after that I realised that poetry was really helpful to express my feelings and I began to write poems on anything that inspired me.

One day I was chatting to my friend Sheila and I mentioned the poems I wrote and thought she might like to see some of them, so I started to share the less personal ones with her.  She was so impressed, in the end I shared all of the following ones with her - personal or not!  In fact, I even wrote a poem when she married and made a cross stitch out of it got it framed and gave it to her.

I don’t remember the exact time scales but Sheila was very much taken with what I wrote and she insisted I enter some competitions.  I was extremely nervous at the thought.  This was private work.  Only she and I had seen them and I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to be made public.  But if she felt it was that important, then I would have to do it.  However, I was not going to look for any myself.  She had to find them AND choose the poems I would enter.  We did this four times and one of the poems I entered was published each time.

When I started my history degree I realised there would be a lot of writing.  In spite of this I did some journalling and letters to people and tried to ensure that what I sent to others was supportive, encouraging and told then about things I came across with my thoughts about it.  I met a friend’s mother who was dying with cancer and he told me that she looked forward to receiving them every week.   

Basically I could probably count on my hands the number of days I have NOT written SOMETHING.  Even if it’s notes to people, writing is my be all and end all.  Something I live for and when I don’t do it, I kind of shrivel up inside.  Since moving to Scotland, I have been writing lots of articles and giving my opinion on different things that happen - either to me or in the world around me/us.  I have also had many ideas for different novels and have now actually begun to develop some of them.  Looking back now I can see where all this creativity came from.  

Covid gave me a lot of time to write, not only because I was teaching Johnathan but I could follow the things he was writing and work from his prompts too.  So during that time I decided I was going to write a poetry book and get it published.  Somehow, someway.

So I have my new poetry book Our Brave New World published on Apple and Amazon.  It is a book to uplift and encourage yourself or others with.  Although written during covid, there are very few poems that talk about it.  My aim in writing it was to encourage others during their dark or difficult days.  And the poems are only short ones so that people can get  the whole flavour of them and not have to  concentrate for a really long time.  I know when I’m feeling more down or anxious for whatever reason I find it harder to read any book with chapters or short stories,  but poetry you can put down and pick up at will.