I once heard someone compare writers to Pokemon because we evolve over time ...
And I must admit, I like the analogy 😅
I've been writing since I was 5 years old ... I'm now 32 and can definitely confirm that both my writing and my stories have changed over the past 27 years!
My oldest surviving story is one I wrote for a class during my first couple of years of primary school (for those who might not know, primary school in the UK is for children aged around 5 to 10 years old).
For some reason, only the first and last pages exist now - and the illustrated character looks like Mario despite this being before I played any Super Mario games - but that's a mystery for another day 😄
The stories I wrote during that period would have been largely influenced by the stories I read as a child, until I developed the skill to come up with my own ideas. But the exercise of writing, along with my passion for reading, at such a young age really kickstarted my dream of becoming a writer.
Fast forward to when I started secondary school (for those who don't know, secondary school in the UK is for children aged around 11 to 16 years old). I was writing much more comprehensive stories, both at home and at school for my English Literature classes.
Feedback from my teacher at the time shows just how early my love of description was (not so subtly) shining through in my writing 😂
During that part of my life, I was obsessed with pirates (thank you, Pirates of the Carribean franchise) ... as well as elves and vampires.
I must admit, these are things I'm not entirely over, but I am aware of how heavily saturated those particular subgenres are. I won't say 'never', though, so although I don't have any complete stories with pirates, elves, or vampires just yet, there may be some in the future.
These stories were written for me (and sometimes for my teachers for assignments) and were about the things I wanted to write about. They were fun and had a freedom to them that I revelled in.
I continued to write these types of stories in a stop-start kind of manner. Then, when I went to university - and got told 'fantasy doesn't belong' there (complete and utter BS, if you ask me) - I started writing historical fiction short stories and nature poetry. You can read many of these on the 'Enjoy Hobbit-Sized Reads' page on this blog 🙂
While at university, I started a number of novels and wrote the complete first draft of my current post-apocalyptic, alternative historical fiction novel, Sanctuary on Severn.
My time at university taught me a lot about writing and myself - some useful and some unintentionally harmful things that I had to unlearn years later. I've talked about my university experience a few times on this blog, so I won't go into it here.
And in 2020, I wrote the complete first draft of my dark fantasy quest novel, Bones & Dreams. This was done during a particularly horrible period of writers block. I decided to try writing with no plan whatsoever (or 'pantsing', as it is commonly referred to in the writing world) - I've always been someone who needs some amount of planning before writing - to see if that would help.
It did help (clearly) but I ended up with one of the most incoherent stories I have ever written 😬I'm currently still avoiding the huge task of unravelling that draft by focusing on Sanctuary on Severn but I'll address it soon enough so it can stop lurking at the edges of my mind ... 👀
So, from tales of cornflake-loving boys, pirate princesses, elves and vampires to dark fantasy and specualtive fiction, I think its safe to say that I've changed a lot and learnt even more. I am so excited to see where my writing journey goes as my stories continue to evolve, and I'm so happy you're here beside me as it happens.
Keep your eyes peeled for more news on my writing here and on my Instagram!
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