My friend Tamara at Thyme for Tea has very kindly reminded me that one of my blogging goals for this year is to to write one post a week about writing - mine and others - as opposed to only writing posts directly related to my reading.
When I first started BookBath I had every intention of using the blog space to write about writing as well as reading - but for some reason that hasn't really happened. I think that is probably consistent with my own writing practice at the moment - writing was once something I was continually doing - now it is really only something I do for work or academic purposes (not really as much fun!).
Back in my high school days I kept a journal, I wrote letters to my best friend every night and gave them to her the next day at school, I had pen friends from all around the world who I kept in regular contact with, and I also remember writing a series of short stories involving my friends and our antics (I can only imagine what they would sound like if I read them now!).
Even when I got to Uni I was still hanging in there for a while - letter writing, keeping my journal (in an ad hoc manner) and keeping note books and scrapbooks full of ideas for stories. I even completed a creative writing course as part of my BA - now that I think back this may have been the beginning of the end for my writing! My competitive nature came to the fore and I struggled with not being "the best" at writing - instead of just enjoying what I had for myself.
This year I have made a decision to go back to my writing and one of the steps I am taking to pursue this is to take part in an 8 week online writing mentoring program starting in mid February - I am excited about this but also a little nervous. As a way of starting to get my mind into gear I have been digging up some of my old writing pieces - I have even discovered a VERY descriptive piece I wrote as a 16 year old school student so long ago! Very cringe worthy and bloody awful writing but kinda sweet at the same time.
I have also discovered some very basic pencil drawings I have done in the long ago past (see above)- as childish as they appear they do help to remind me that I can create - when I put my mind to it.
