There’s no time to write, I used that line for years. I told myself I would be writing if I simply wasn’t too busy paying the bills, finding ‘Mr Right’, being a parent, divorcing ‘Mr Not-So-Right’ and all the stuff of life. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t writing, I was a journalist and then an advertising copy writer. I was getting words down and getting paid for it. Just not the words I wanted to get down.
Then I joined a creative writing group. I turned up one afternoon and there was a group of like-minded people, with great work and a packet of biscuits to share. I felt as if I’d arrived at the right party 20 years late. Since then the stories have come tumbling out.
Strangely, those empty hours I imagined I needed haven’t suddenly materialised. Instead I have carved out the time: writing in my lunch hour, on my phone during a 20-minute commute to and from work, in the early morning, in the late evening, here and there, and even by recording thoughts and ideas when walking the dog. I found the time. I recalled the novelist, Fay Weldon, telling an interviewer that she had written a book while sitting on the stairs as her four boys played around her. I’m not advocating that, but with 20 books or more under her belt she must have felt compelled and that’s how I feel now.
The stories and characters that have been lurking in my imagination for decades are being set free.
wordyweddle 