: About Me

Hello,

I am on here under my pen-name so if you think you recognise my picture (if it ever loads) but are puzzled, that could be why! I am 32 and live in Scotland with my wonderful husband. We have been married for just over 18 months and our first child is due in April. I am sure our child will be creative - as the house is full of books, yarn, pens, pencils and art materials!

I am just getting back into writing now that I have more time on my hands and have decided that I really should start following my dreams. I have a third to a half of my first novel completed but keep getting scared and stopping. My husband has been writing for this site for over two years, however, and has been doing really well so I am forging a path too.

As well as writing I also like to crochet, knit, read, go on journies, walk a lot, chat with people at a leisurely pace, daydream and hang out with my husband as much as possible.

I have always wanted to be a writer, and I completed two books ('The Adventures of Lucy' and 'Another Lot of Fun With Lucy') by the time I was eleven. I won a watch from the "Bunty'" magazine when I was nine for my poem about teachers becoming their 'Star Letter'. I also won my first walkman in a competition to describe a dream home of the future through Nationwide Building Society, I think I was about ten or eleven at the time. I soon got a few lines of poetry published in my school magazine and the newsletter my Nana's work produced.

I also had the good fortune to receive a letter from the Scottish writer Rennie McOwan praising my work when I was in my mid-teens, as my friend lived next door to him and sneaked some stuff through his door unbeknownst to me! I had a few poems published in anthologies by Forward Press in my teens, too.

Unfortunately, once one leaves school and gets tangled up in work and relationships, the lofty writer-dreams can be pushed to the back of one's mind. I did submit a collection of poetry to different publishers in my late teens, however, and I still have all the rejection slips to prove it! They said my work wasn't polished enough and also I needed twice as many poems for a book. I gave up for a while.

I completed a BA Hons degree, majoring in English, as a mature student in 2003. I came up with the original plot for, and wrote snippets of, my novel in this time, but I mostly revelled in other people's work and loved the seminars where I would get to debate books and ideas. I began to train as a teacher as part of my degree, specialising in English and R.E, but it was not for me and Ireturned to the retail jobs I had fallen back on before.

Fast forward two years and I met the aforementioned love of my life and got inspired all over again. My novel had been sitting neglected with barely 5,000 words written of it, but with this new influx of praise and encouragement it swelled to over 40,500 in four years (which may not sound a lot but I told you, I get scared). I have reworked the plot countless times and I'm always tweaking the the dialogue, but I am hoping to get the brute finished by the end of the year now I have the time. I don't know if this first novel will ever sell, but at least I should be able to work out the kinks in my writing style and then maybe get famous with the second one...

My passion is ...

Reading and creating

I know too much about ...

procrastination

My parents always told me ...

"You can do anything if you put your mind to it"

My childhood ambition ...

To be a famous writer

My favorite memory ...

My wedding day

Why I write ...

Therapy and a sense of achievement

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

"Carpe Jugulum" by Terry Pratchett/Loving "Flashforward"/The sound of my thoughts whirring

My first job ...

A Lane Patroller in a bowling alley where I also hosted children's birthday parties.

My best moment ...

Saying "I do" and managing not to cry

My inspiration ...

Quiet time - with tea and sunshine if at all possible

Arts & Humanities > Thoughts on Writing Guide to creativity for non-artists

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Being creative does not mean that you must be able to draw or paint. It also does not demand that you fit anybody else's idea of perfection or 'art'. Creativity is the desire to make something from something else, to construct an idea from the materials to hand. Creativity springs from looking at the world in a new way. Every one of us is unique and has a world view. In melding this world view with a willingness to express it, a person can create something pleasing to themselves. Pleasing themselves should be the primary object of any creator. Fashioning an image or object should be a fun ...

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