Hmm. So where do I start? With a cup of Twinings' finest and an explanation of this blog, I guess....

Being a rather insular soul, the thought of blogging never crossed my mind. And I mean never. And although I'm typing one now, I'm still not sure about it.

It all started one rainy evening... What? Ok. You got me. It didn't.  It actually started in June this year, when I'd decided I needed a break from my - really quite stressful - job managing apartment blocks. I handed my notice in and day-dreamed for the next  2 months about being an unemployed (funemployed) bum for - ooh, at least 3 months.

Come the 11th hour, I realised (thanks to many friends, who know me really quite disconcertingly well) that I'd go from 200 miles an hour to zero in a second and would probably lose my mind after a week of enforced relaxing. Well, lose what little was left from burning out on the job, that is. No, not literally the job. I told you, I managed property.

Anyways, I decided that to keep busy I would do a relatively short and simple writing course online. Now, I haven't written creatively since I left school 20 years ago, but always in the back of my mind was a little voice that whispered encouragingly, 'You've got a book in you. Somewhere. Deep down. I can see it, down there, almost totally buried. Hey! It's still shiny!' I gather lots of people hear variations of that particular voice, and like many people, I've successfully managed to ignore it for many years. Until now.

Ok, so, it's a big dream, and I'm only just flexing my creative muscle now.  I finished my writing course, which was short but enjoyable. Best of all it ensured that I didn't end up rocking in the corner of my darkened sitting room, mumbling to myself and sucking my thumb occasionally. Boredom successfully avoided.

Since I finished it, around a month ago, I've mostly been reading about the art of writing fiction, and reading all the examples I can get my greedy mitts on in the genre I want to write in. That might seem like brilliantly disguised procrastination, but I promise it isn't. Well, not any more, anyway!

Some of the really inspiring and informative things I've read in the last month are other authors' blogs and at some point I'll work out how to link them in. On one of them just last week I found a writing challenge that made me want to attempt it. So I did. And I thought that it was just for myself, to get some practice in, after 20 years of not writing anything, but having participated I damn well want someone to read it! Hence my blog.

So here we are, thanks to Chuck Wendig's Flash Fiction Friday.

Girlwithadream
1 Oct 2013