Hi all,
I’m starting the Blogging from A to Z Challenge today. A post a day (except Sundays) for the whole of April and each post with an A-Z theme. I’m quite excited (if a little nervous that I still haven’t thought of something for all the days!) There’s a huge amount of blogs joining in- so feel free to check out the full list here – and if you haven’t signed up yourself then go for it! Anyway, without further ado let’s get started 🙂
1st April – A is for Author
Okay, it’s a little obvious but hey, I’m just getting warmed up here 🙂 Author can be an odd term – for some people it can seem like some strange and mythical title that can only be applied to best-selling, award-winning, world-famous writers. I know it took me a long time to actually feel like I could call myself an ‘author’ or a writer. Even now there’s sometimes an odd sense of unreality to it – like I’m playing make-believe and someone will jump out say ‘what do you think you’re doing – you haven’t achieved enough to earn that title’.
I know I’m not the only one, so for those of you still feeling in that position, I will say to you what I try to tell myself (in a totally non-creepy, non-pep-talk-in-the-mirror style way!) – if you write then you’re a writer, if you create written works – whether they be short stories, novellas, novels, epics or even poems then you’re an author. Embrace it, be proud of, it’s something that a lot of people would like to be but they never get beyond the thinking about it stage.
For those of us who do embrace it – then be warned, once you get started on the path you won’t want to leave. It will take over your life, your waking moments and dreams, it will fill your mind with characters that become as familiar to you as your best friends, snippets of conversations and faraway places, fights and kisses, strange creatures, swoon-worthy heros, sassy heroines and dastardly villains. There will highs and lows, good days when the words flow and you happily shut out the real world to revel in your own fantasy ones, bad days when your characters refuse to do as they’re told, or don’t want to speak to you, where plots simply will not make sense and you wonder why you started in the first place. It’s something that surely no sane person would ever want to do – but then that’s the beauty of us authors – are any of us really quite sane?
So why do we do it? To share one of my favourite quotes.
‘Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel like I should be doing something else.’ Gloria Steinem
Says it all really 🙂 I would love to hear your own experiences – feel free to share below x