This blog is about my journey as a creative writer. I am a trained historian so much of my past writing has been academic. I have also been working for the last several years as a professional editor and, more recently, a content designer. So there have been, and still are, lots of words in my life. But this is the first time I’ve decided to log my process as a creative writer specifically.

In 2017, I dedicated myself to writing a novel. I completed the first draft in a matter of months following a discipline of writing a page a day. The process was very therapeutic and I learnt a lot about myself. As an emotionally restorative project it was very useful and healing, but as a story it lacked conflict. With a very meandering plot line, it operated in many ways as a diary with the main character based very obviously on myself. That project is on hold at the moment. It could do with a major re-write and I might get to that or jump straight into a new novel.

In the meantime, I have been working on a short story. This project has been much more visceral. There is challenging conflict and a lot of pain. While the novel was about a character self-actualizing, this short story is about a character, a child, in crisis. Emotionally it is more draining to write, but still rewarding. I am close to composing the ending now, but am still undecided about what it will be.

In addition to the above efforts, I write poems almost daily. Some are tools that allow me to emotionally connect to the world around me. Others are observations or experiences worth recording in poetry. And sometimes I just put words together to play with sounds, rhythms and other literary devices that I need to brush up on.

I hope to make this blog useful for my readers who are writing creatively or interested in this topic. I want to connect to other writers, share advice from the community and document my own journey as a creative writer.