Writing has always been like medicine to me. It is a great comfort during times of stress and uncertainty, so with the country on lock-down due to coronavirus and everyone ordered to stay at home, now is the perfect opportunity to hide away with your pen for company. Even Jo March was writing her way through the crisis of the American Civil War, not to mention the poverty she and her family had to endure . For Jo, writing was a comfort, an escape and also a way for her to improve the fortunes of her family.
In dark, troubled times even small victories can lighten the load, so it was with great delight that I recieved the news that I have had a short piece of flash fiction accepted for publication in the University anthology. Although the launch of the anthology has had to be postponed until November, rather than this summertime as was previously scheduled, it still feels like something to celebrate as, aside from all my poetry, this will be my first fiction piece published.
It is even more special because the piece was actually inspired by my soldier of the Black Watch, so it is very personal to me and I am honoured that it has been selected for the anthology, and that so many people have already been moved by it. Some told me that they had tears in their eyes as they read it.
The book launch party will now be a part of the Off The Shelf Festival of Words event in the city this autumn and I can't wait to attend as a literary contributor, rather than just as a spectator. It's a great festival of literature and I feel so proud that my work will be a part of it this year.
It marks a distinct shift in my writing too, from Wiccan writer and self-help columnist, into new territory as a fiction author. A small start perhaps, but a start nonetheless and it feels great to finally have my foot in the door of fiction publishing, even in a small way, as so many people never, ever get there. But I have.
Some of the great novelists began by writing for their university, among them Tolkien who wrote for Oxford and F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote for Princeton. More recently Jeremy Paxman was editor of Varsity, the publication of Cambridge University. So it seems like it's a tried and tested writing route! I'm happy to just see where it takes me.
So while the world might be in a mass-panic of anxiety and uncertainty, I find that I am weathering this storm quite calmly. I have lots of free time to write my last assignment for this year. My Masters Degree course has been quite disrupted so far with the tutor strikes and then coronavirus shutting us down completely, but I'm used to working from home. It's what I prefer. And of course, I will be back in classes come September if all returns to normal, as I still have another year on this course. I'm glad of that too, as it would have been a rubbish way to end the course had this been my final year and my heart goes out to the students who find themselves in that situation, where their studies have basically just fallen off a cliff! At least I have next year's studies to look forward to.
Any crisis provides a deep well of inspiration and I've had so many ideas for future topics to explore in my monthly psychotherapy column. I'm going to very busy writing those up and submitting them to my editor. Writing and publishing are one of the industries that lends itself to the work from home lifestyle, so my writing life continues uninterrupted.
Over the years many, many people have said to me 'I wish I had time to write'. I always reply that you must make time to write. You must prioritize your writing above other things - like soap operas and bad TV. Well, now is your chance to see if you really do have what it takes to be a writer, to find out if you have the discipline and dedication it takes to succeed in this field, or if it's just a pipe-dream. As you can't leave the house anyway, you might as well try to write that book you've been pondering on. Now there are no excuses and it's just you and your pen. So what are you waiting for?
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