Before I could physically write, I was
already, in a sense, a writer. I invented people, worlds and
situations. I daydreamed. I “played games”, and assigned roles
to my brother and friends. I talked to myself, as well. Past
tense...? Well, not entirely – because I'm a writer, and writers
are weird. That's my excuse, anyway.
When I was five or six, and able to go
beyond the formation of individual sentences, I wrote my first
stories. I was that child who loved writing stories at school so
much that I wrote my own, out of choice. I found Maths boring and
difficult. I have the co-ordination disorder dyspraxia – which, at
the time, was undiagnosed – and was, therefore, useless at the
so-called “fun” activities: pretty much every sport,
basically. I was bullied relentlessly, right through school, and
struggled with depression and anxiety, from a very young age. I
never fitted in, and longed to, but if I had, then maybe I would have
been happy but ordinary, and not a writer. It was the one thing that
I was able to do better than average, and I focused on that.
I do have periods of writers' block,
for want of a better term. I also have long reading slumps. I don't
write every day. I would like to say that I do, but I don't. That's
just the truth. I currently have many health issues, physical and
mental health. I have been let down so many times, by people I
thought I could rely upon – family members, who have been less than
supportive, to put it mildly – and so-called “friends”, who
have hurt me deeply. Poetry has often helped me through, and
currently, I do have a novel that I am working on – an old project,
which I revived a few years ago. I am making slow progress, but
getting there. It's a project that means so much to me, more than I
can express - and yet, I am terrified of failure. Sometimes, the
fear leaves me paralysed, and I don't get anything done at all.
Still, I do believe in what I am doing,
with all my heart, and I know that I have to finish my novel. I did
finish another, and shelved the first draft, without revising, which
I am okay with. In my heart, I felt, and still do, that finishing
was enough, in that instance.
This is just a very brief summary of
where I am at, with my writing, but it's a start. I want to start
everywhere and say everything, but that is impossible. Writing is my
life. I've been in some dark places, and I truly believe that I
wouldn't be here without my fiction and poetry.
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