THE THING ABOUT WRITING

So here’s the thing: I am a writer.  I know this.  My family knows this.  My friends all know this.  

When booking childhood holidays my sister would point to a picturesque villa in the brochure and say ‘...and look, siss, you can spend your siestas writing on that balcony,’ or when looking at perspective houses to move our family to my Dad would point to a bay window and say, ‘... and can’t you just see yourself writing your first novel on those cushions?’  I devour books for breakfast, lunch, dinner and the occasional midnight snack.  Books of all shapes, sizes, genres and ages.  And yes I might be more than just a little bit partial to a dashing hero but, let’s face it, what self-respecting girl would turn down Mr. Rochester, psycho wife notwithstanding?  

And so it was with this awareness of my innate literary leanings that I blissfully swanned through school and found myself ensconced in a prestigious university which managed to combine all the facilities of a modern educational institution with an intensely romantic medieval history, and all because I couldn’t keep my nose out of my Complete Works of Jane Austen when I was younger.  Three years later what better way to gather fodder for my imminent breakthrough works than to travel the world with my best friend?  My adventures brought me all I could ever wish for and thus I returned to the bosom of my family business and have been perched on the edge of a comfortable cloud of retail ever since, scudding across the beautiful lush green landscape of Wales, furnished with a framed Bachelor of Arts and a dozen bookshelves packed with novels, plays, criticism and poetry.

And yet I can’t help noticing that, other than my beloved collection of journals and essays, none of the words on the pages are actually mine.  How can I be a writer if I haven’t written anything?

And so, it is with much trepidation that I am, if not diving head first off my comfy cloud, then at least browsing ebay for some arm bands of ambition to give me a fighting chance against the tide of self-proclaimed critics out there.  As of yet, being a writer has merely been a state of mind, helping to define my personality type and give my brain something to ponder when it reluctantly gives me the ‘ok’ to put the book down, turn the light off and go to sleep already!

Of course the benefit of not ever writing anything means that I have yet to fail.  But it also means that I never did get to scribble a storyline on an Italian balcony overlooking a vineyard, or snuggle into a bay window and wait for inspiration to hit. And so here goes.  Even if this is the only combination of words which I ever show anyone, at least I can now say with certainty that the armbands fit and are waiting to be blown up: I am a writer.