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When Writing One Must Always …

No, I’m not going to give sage advice about anything related to grammar, or reader engagement, or using correct tenses, or any of that doubtless important stuff. If you’re hear reading this you quite likely already know about such things.

No, what you must always do when writing is to hold your sense of wonder, and the idea that one day the Unicorns may arrive, and you should be prepared to adore them when the come …

Your sense of wonder can lead you and your writing to places no other writer has ever been before, and you can then truly write words that can connect to those who will be prepared to follow you, and your words, and any Unicorns that show up, and Good Things may surely come of it!

When you think your writng is rubbish and no-one will want to read what you’ve written, take a short break, smell the roses, check out the sky and see the clouds, hunt for dragons in the clouds, and then back to ground level look for Unicorns hiding in amongst the trees.

They’re all there, if you’re prepared to look, and your writing, while not perfect, isn’t ever rubbish. The first draft is what you have to write before you can begin to fix it up with careful editing, or before you go on to writing that isn’t rubbish at all.

Read good books and articles, think about what made them good, write more share your writing with others who’s opinions you respect, listen, think, speak, learn, and write and write and write, reading in between, always.

And dream, imagine, make up silly tales, imagine mythincal creatures, and hold onto your child-like sense of wonder that is still there inside of you, no matter your age. I’m 63, I write poetry, flaff around in the garden and I remember how magical it was when I bought my first Unicorn around fifty years ago. Magical!

Remember the magic already in your life, and work with it to bring magical things to the world through your writing. Magic in Economics? Sure why not? Life is magical, even economists breathe the same air we all breathe, and they can see the magic in the numbers they work with, I’m sure. There is magic in the idea of Universal Basic Income, that’s for sure!

So when writing, one must always look for the magic that’s all around and inside of you, work with it, play with it, show it to your readers, through your words!

And when you next see a Unicorn, please give it a pat from me!

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On Hoping For Words …

Wife, mother, dog owner. Important things in my life, all of them. But I was a lover of words before I was any of those three things, and when my time is coming to an end, I hope I will still be a writer, and lover of words.

I’ll always be a mother, I certainly hope, and if the wife label changes to widow, well it will not be an unexpected thing, sad, but that’s how life often (but not always) goes. And while I plan for having a dog in my life for a long time to come, who knows if that will last until my end? I like trees too, and unicorns, and I hope for many more trees and unicorns in my life!

But the love of words, reading, writing, thinking about reading and writing. Sharing my love of words in as many ways as I can. That will stay with me, I hope. I am a reader, poet, writer of fiction and of non fiction, and an editor. I have eight published books, with an anthology with a publisher and waiting to hear whether they wish to publish it.

I am ‘working on’ a novel, the first in a series of novels, that, if they work, might well be with me until my end too … And if that novel series dies unborn, well at least I had a bit of a go at it. Poetry sings to my soul though. Poetry, those few words, stripped back to just the best words, and nothing more, that I hope will always be there with me too.

Some of my books

Words, writing them, reading them, sharing them, these are the good things I share the most with my friends. I hope my enthusiasm for words, lights a fuse in the lives of others and they shine brighter in their lives, with the glow of their words.

If I didn’t have this focus, these options and ideas, what would my life be then? A sad and dreary thing, I’m sure. Words bring understanding, insight, ideas. I love words, I think words are pretty fond of me too!