Reasons To Write
Hint...they can change over time
If you've subscribed to the blog I've written for almost a decade, you might already know I’m an accidental author. I grew up in a house without any books. Our parents didn’t read to us because they couldn’t. So, becoming a writer never entered my mind.
I realised what I’d missed when I got my first library card at seven and began devouring Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. At school, writing was how you proved you remembered the things you were taught. Could you correctly transcribe the ten spellings you’d learned that week? And years later, could you quote Hamlet’s soliloquy in an exam essay to illustrate a point?
Decades after I left school, now a wife and mother, living in Australia, I discovered Seth Godin’s blog. That discovery changed my life. I had just become a small business coach, and realised I could share what I knew with a wider audience by writing online. It was a steep learning curve. There was so much I didn’t know, both on the writing and technology side, but I got better with practice, posting five days a week for years. That blog was the catalyst for my ten non-fiction books, the popular Story Skills workshop and a successful consulting career.
But the bigger gift the blog and readers gave me was a reason to pay attention to the world. Writing was no longer just about regurgitating or communicating—it was how I learned to see.
When I took a break from blogging to write novels, I immersed myself in the past and hunkered down at my desk in front of long Word documents for months and years. If I’m lucky, the novel I’m working on today will be in readers’ hands two to three years from now. While this immersion in creative writing, where I get to make up places, plots, and people, can be joyful, ironically, it sometimes stops me from paying attention to the present.
This post is a long way of saying I’ve missed showing up regularly for you and noticing the world on your behalf (and mine too). You are the reason I’m back writing here on Substack. That’s enough of a reason, for now.
I took your Story Skills Workshop twice, I loved it that much!! You've played a big part in why I'm here writing on Substack today, thank you!!
Now I'm curious to know what happened in the…
“Decades after I left school, now a wife and mother, living in Australia…”
That allowed the transition into...
“I had just become a small business coach,”