I’ve been writing since the age of five. It seemed to happen so randomly yet once I got hooked onto the craft, it was a struggle to stop. Because of a family member’s work, they sometimes had to proof read exhibit information for displays in museums and galleries, so whenever I had to do English related work for school, they would always be on hand to read through my writing and check for spelling mistakes.
These days, it’s quicker and easier (for me anyway) to type on a phone or laptop device then physically putting a pen to paper. As I got older, my wrists started to seize up more which was a little concerning. After some investigating, I concluded that my hands had gotten so used to technology that I should focus on using that for communication instead of the traditional method. It’s meant in the past while travelling daily on buses or going away on holidays with loved ones, I can take my writing anywhere and type new ideas for stories or characters all the time. It’s magic!
What still draws me in is the past and the beautiful, sometimes traumatic historical inventions or events that took place. I loved the classic typewriter for example. One of my favourite authors Jacqueline Wilson still uses one for her writing and her latest novel came out in August of this year. The old and the vintage still work and are on offer to people who don’t want to turn to technology.
With my writing, I find it so much easier to write in poetic verse and epistolary style rather than prose. This I feel I can put down to a couple of reasons. The first is through studying poetry for GCSE English Literature. Most of the poems I did were outdated and boring. It was through this frustration that I questioned my own poetry. It’s always exciting to hear new voices and words all the time. Yet I realised that I have to credit past poets who wrote hundreds of years ago credible works that are still in print today. The other reason is through my experiences using the website Wattpad. On joining and creating my first ever account, I stuck to writing poetry and that’s what really kickstarted my online writing journey.
The readers and the feedback were a sense of accomplishment. Before entering the online world, I would always shield my poems away from the eye of anyone else except for me. Most young people I knew didn’t really give too hoots about poetic musings. My poems would be about nature, falling in love, breaking up and cutting ties with someone you once considered close. I blame Taylor Swift and her songs when I was a teen writer. It was so easy to get inspiration from her songs at the time, that it drove my writing forwards.
In 2017, I started to write Letters To Myself (which is posted in full to Penana!) and during the nanowrimo process, learnt that if I stuck to writing just prose, that wasn’t going to cut it with me. I rebelled. I made the main character Morwenna into strong fragments of myself as a person. She loved to write, express herself through letters and poetry, worked hard, had dreams etc. That is why most if not all of my various novels and main characters are heavily inspired by me or my closest surroundings.
When it comes to memoir writing, it isn’t as daunting to type and for years, I really wondered why that was the case. I know for most writers, talking about themselves is near impossible without crying or cringing. Being the opposite has opened up a reflective side. I do daydream and ponder a lot, sometimes too much. And also sometimes not healthily. Past events that happened years ago and really should have come to terms with flashback and haunt me. After my autistic diagnosis, I was amazed to learn that being reflective is a trait and also a good trait to have.
I’ve made mistakes in the past, haven’t we all? My family have said that it’s how you learn from them that counts. That’s the part of my brain that is still in working progress. My depression contributes to this struggle in the sense that it causes my memory to be hazy and lacking in focus towards hobbies and people I love could be devastating for my health and life. No, I haven’t done anything extremely drastic or serious. There have moments of the odd comment being worded wrong or not showing up to class on time.
When my mental health during my student years plummeted, I would often leave a class and instead find a quiet stairwell or loo cubicle to hide in and type on a phone writing ideas or some poetry. Depending on how spaced out I really was, some of my wording came out dark and haunting. I wrote another work on Penana called .Death which is not only my most-read upload so far here, but the one that was truly written during moments of leaving classes and battling deepest anxieties. A few months after completing .Death, I had the biggest mental breakdown I had ever dealt with which nearly had life-changing consequences.
What I’m trying to say is that people scared me and sometimes, still do. How I fight back or prove my voice exists is by writing works such as this one and staying online. That way, I’m a person pursuing the hobby discovered and grew a strong bond to and turning it into a haven and private typing bubble. With my memoir writing and .Death, I could have kept those works and thoughts to myself. But what would have resulted from that? Yes the word documents would have still been sitting there on my phone yet the dark moods would have remained.
I’m fighting for acceptance and to give my words a fair chance in this world.
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