“Who I am and why I’m here”

Ooh, that heading feels like the essay question your new English teacher would set each 1st September as a kind of ‘getting to know the class’ exercise.  It was always either ‘All about me’ or “How I spent my summer’. What’s next, an analysis of imagery in Keats’ Ode to Autumn?

Well, for the benefit of my existing followers (hi Dad!) I’m writing this as my first assignment in a month long online blogging course, to try and inspire me to write better and more often.  I’ll be getting a set subject to blog about every day, which may be a bit different to what I usually write about, so that will be interesting!

For the benefit of fellow Blogging101-ers, hello! I’m not exactly new to blogging, having started this blog in early 2014, but I’m very bad at writing it regularly and I really like the idea of having some focus and encouragement for the next few weeks.  I started a blog because I’ve always wanted to write, have always kept a diary and written letters, but was increasingly feeling that this wasn’t enough, that I needed to do more.  I’ve got various ideas for novels or plays that I’d like to write, but felt too daunted to just plunge straight into something so enormous, so the bitesize chunks of a blog seemed a good place to start.  I blog about anything that comes into my head, which is probably a bit random, and my blog is loosely categorised into stuff about parenting, politics and interesting places I’ve been.  I recently had the idea that I was going to write a series of reviews of books that I’ve been reading with my children, wrote one piece about The Wizard of Oz and then of course haven’t got round to doing any more.  But I will, honest. Soon.

Just lately I’ve been feeling that with my writing I’m a bit like a car labouring along in second gear, straining to slip into third and speed up.  I’ve been tinkering about in my spare time, fitting writing in around my part time job and bringing up my two children, but this doesn’t feel enough any more.  The only chance I have to write is if I can stay awake after the rest of the family have gone to bed, and given that one of them is a total insomniac, that doesn’t leave me much time!  With youngest child starting school in September, there is the potential for me to spend some time alone with my notebooks and computer, and I would love to devote all my time to improving my writing, with the objective of trying to make a living out of it.  But short of a lottery win to tide me over until the big publisher’s advance comes in (ha ha) I’m just going to have to keep on fitting it in around work and family life.  Hopefully Blogging101 will give me the impetus and encouragement to fit writing in to the odd moments I have during the day, like now while 4YO is playing with a bucket of water on the back step! And who knows, maybe one day I’ll get where I want to be…

 

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