When I was a little girl, I liked to write stories.  I was quite an awkward kid and always a little unsure of myself during Primary school years.  I spent a lot of time thinking hard about how best to fit in with my peers and marvelling at how I’d learnt to react to a social situation correctly and then dismay where I’d accidentally given a reason to be teased.  Our school days were set in very basic slots; in the morning we would do maths.  After that, perhaps social studies and then maybe Art.  I was quickly recognised as a student who didn’t do well with numbers.  I recall very vividly my embarrassment at being put in the “Blue Group” for maths time, separated from all my friends who were in the “Red Group”.  Everyone knew that Red was the best and Blue was the worst.

I wasn’t so great at Art either, for that matter.  We were all give a copy of a simple colouring picture, a man gathering hay, I think.  It might have been something Biblical.  Desperate to avoid the embarrassment of another ugly and Over The Lines piece of work that I’d be forced to write my name on, I carefully selected my crayons in the exact same palette as another girl, who always coloured in the best.  I copied her drawing exactly.  The result was a horribly poor imitation, so much so that no one even realised what I’d done.

Perhaps after lunch we would have Silent Reading and then we would write stories.  This was the part of the day where my childish pride would suddenly take a lift.  I was in the most advanced group for reading and was given special Big Kid Books that were too hard for the other kids to read.  I was smug about this.  Then, the creative writing, which I loved so much.  I would write about fairies and talking animals.  I would write about fantastical worlds that I could see so clearly in my head.  I would force my mother to read them once I’d got home.

Years later, in high school, English was still my best and most loved subject.  After that… I guess it all just dried up.  I kept diaries and mostly spent and free time writing dedicated to life writing.  I still have snippets of conversations between characters in my head, although, I’m never quite certain who these characters are.  I construct situations and small beginnings of story lines and convince myself that they are really rather good and I should probably get back into creative writing at some point.  As soon as my hand touches a keyboard or pen, however, my brain freezes.  I’ve forgotten all those well described scenarios and what comes out is an embarrassing sentence or two, that I agonise over, then delete and forget about.

I’ve decided to start again.  I’m reading up a storm and, shamefully, bought The Artists’ Way as recommended by quite a few friends now.  Who knows, perhaps one day I might actually finish something.