The writing has always been there...

It was me who left.

As a young child I would write stories and poems – with no discernible talent or skill, mind you, just imagination and boredom. I didn’t write with any intention of being ‘a Writer’, nor did I have notions of the writing going any further than what it was at the time, which was a way of expressing myself in a world that was sometimes confusing and contradictory to me.

Now I’m older and wiser, and the world is always confusing and contradictory to me.

I was better written than I was with any other expressive medium. And it came relatively easily. Words tended to flow out through my fingers, whether it be in stories or journalling or letters. I just… wrote.

I didn’t seek or receive much feedback about my writing. I didn’t put it ‘out’ anywhere or give it to anyone for their opinion. I didn’t seek any external validation about it, because it wasn’t something I thought needed it. Writing was just a thing I did to make sense of my thoughts and feelings, of what was happening in my world and in the world. In my mind, I held my writing as completely distinct and separate from what Writers did (and of course it was; I am not trying to equate myself with published authors) – those Writers were real Writers, whereas I just… wrote.

Caveat here to say that of course one doesn’t need to be published to be a writer. I’m expressing here the perception I held of myself as being so distant and far-removed from Writers, whether published or not.

A rare and therefore memorable piece of feedback I recall receiving was in my final year of high school. My English teacher gave us a creative writing assignment: write a song. It was a strange assignment, and very unlike her usual assignments which were along the lines of:

In viewing the 1995 film Clueless as an appropriation of Jane Austen’s 19th century novel Emma, compare and contrast the main characters Cher and Emma respectively, considering their values and motivations in light of their societal confines.

Not exactly that, but close. So the vague assignment to “write a song”, without theme or genre or really any kind of guardrail, was unusual. Our 17- and 18-year-old minds were filled with Usher’s U Got It Bad and Nelly and Kelly Rowland’s Dilemma. Even if you don’t know the songs, perhaps you recall your own 17- or 18-year-old vision of romantic love – was it dramatic, full of big gestures, somewhat tragic, completely unrealistic, and did I mention dramatic? Mine was. And as such, my assignment submission was an appropriately clichéd and over-emotional poem repurposed as a song.

I do not sit here with the misconception that there was any talent displayed in that poem. Even at the time, I had no illusions that I was a poet in training, or that I was an undiscovered prodigy of the written word just waiting to be plucked from obscurity. No dear reader, no. I was simply a teenage girl who had been writing things all her life, without any critique or criticism, nor encouragement or adulation.

The feedback was as follows:

“Hmm. Your writing could lead to a job at Hallmark penning their greeting cards, if one aspired to such … heights.”

Devastating. So devastating that it’s tattooed on my brain and I can still see her cursive g’s and slanted h’s. Even now, my stomach seizes and my neck tenses writing those words. There’s a lesson in here somewhere for teachers about wielding far stronger power than they realise, but that’s a conversation for another day. Teachers have enough on their plates without worrying about the over-sensitivities of a particular 17-year-old girl. And I’m also certain that that 17-year-old girl gave a great impersonation of not caring in the slightest about the opinion of her English teacher, or any ‘grown up’ for that matter. But of course, I cared more than slightly. I cared so much that on receiving the above feedback, I decided, without being fully aware of it at the time, that writing wasn’t for me, and I stopped. For 22 years.

Thankfully though, the reading continued. Unsurprisingly I was a voracious reader. I would read anything I could get my hands on. I spent vast amounts of time at the library, more than was normal for a young girl and definitely more than was cool for a teenager. But coolness (which, if we’re honest, was never within my grasp anyway) could never compete with the stories.

And especially, the love stories.

I was quite young when I discovered the stories whose covers featured bare-chested men embracing bed-tousled women with dresses somehow synching in their waists whilst simultaneously falling off their shoulders. And when I did, let me tell you,

I.

Was.

Hooked.

And I have not even the slightest bit of shame around it. None. Even though I feel much undeserved shame is heaped on the romance genre – another conversation for another time – I felt none. I inhaled those stories. I read them as I ate breakfast, I read them in class when I had finished my work, I read them on the bus home from school, I read them whilst waiting for my parents to pick me up from swimming training, I read them when I was supposed to be doing my homework, I read them in bed with a night light under the covers. I was reading a romance story every possible chance I got.

I think we can clearly see why coolness was never really in my grasp, yes?

It was the reading that opened my eyes to there being a Writer behind those stories. Not just someone who wrote, like I used to, but an actual Writer. There were Writers whose stories could take me to places I had never been, could give me words for feelings that I had never expressed, and to be fair, could create those dramatic and unrealistic visions of love that would permeate my teens and early 20s.

Again, it never occurred to me that I could be one of those Writers. I was simply enamoured with the idea of them – who they were, what their lives looked like, what their own love stories looked like. To be clear, this was before the time of Google so I had no answers to these questions, nor did I have the stalker-like tendencies that may have seen me hunt such answers down. But it was enough to have the questions, to think about the Writers, and to wonder about the Writers. It led me to reading about the Writers, understanding the creative processes of different Writers, the ways and the places in which they found inspiration, and the different personal alchemies they used to transform the words in their heads into worlds on paper. I was, and still am, mesmerised by Writers. And I hope I always will be.

I think it was inevitable that I would write again. I also think it’s impossible to give up something at such a young age that meant so much, and to never revisit it. Or impossible for me at least. As the title says, the writing has always been there, waiting for me to come back to it. And now, as then, I don’t write to be a Writer or to put myself in the same category as Writers. Now, as then, I write simply to make sense of my thoughts and feelings, of what is happening in my world and in the world.

And now, I also write for connection.

It’s a lonely world, out there and also in here. We’re isolated from each other, polarised in our silos. Algorithms, a word which didn’t hold much meaning for most of my life until recently, now decide what I see, hear and read. If I’m not careful, algorithms will decide how I think. Without hyperbole, I truly can’t imagine a more terrifying scenario.

So I write, to connect with other writers and Writers. To understand them better and to understand myself better. Writers and writers inspire me constantly, opening my mind to perspectives outside my periphery, and guiding me to explore the layers of experiences that were one dimensional before. They create worlds and invite me to enter, helping me understand their worlds, the world, my world, better. To be a writer among writers is a gift and a privilege I don’t hold lightly.

And, selfishly, I write to feel less alone.

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