A Writer's Journey

I have been writing since my early teens.. At first, I wrote poetry in the vain hope of taming my adolescent rebellion at life. On my new electric typewriter—a gift for my fourteenth birthday—I poured my heart out in gushes of verse, calling on God and the universe to let me make sense of it all. Soon after, hot under the collar about life’s injustices, I wrote short stories in which I found solutions to everything I felt was wrong with the world.

In my twenties, the angst of youth gone, I became an avid letter writer. I had left home, moved from Sydney to Darwin, about as far away as you could get and still be in the same country, and missed my family and friends. My six page missives were, in some way, another rebellion. I longed to be home again, and railed against my isolation the only way I knew how—with words.

Once, many years ago, I tried my hand at writing a Mills and Boon novel. I bashed it out on my, by then, old typewriter, and because I did not believe in the plot—and if I didn’t, how could I expect my reader to—I threw it in the bin.

I joined writing groups and took correspondence classes. I wrote about anything and everything. When a friend’s husband was giving her hell, I wrote a story in which she got away with his murder. A show of daffodils in spring was the catalyst for a poem, an umbrella turned inside out by a wintry blast became the story of a young girl lost. When I wasn’t writing, I was thinking about plot lines, witty dialogue and unforgettable characters.

Somehow, all this frantic writing went by the wayside. Years passed and I didn’t write a jot. I didn’t even think about writing. I was so involved in raising my family, working, playing tennis—until tennis elbow forced me to turn to golf—there was no room in my life for the distraction of the written word. Yet that is not the reason I stopped writing. Easy to think I was too busy, easier still to tout it as an excuse, but the truth is simple—I had lost faith in myself.

Three years ago, I moved to Eynesbury and joined the Wordsmiths of Melton. My love of writing rekindled, I once again found myself tapping away—this time on a computer, my trusty typewriter having stopped working long ago. I have produced many short stories, the odd haiku or two, suffered through a period of writer’s block, and begun a manuscript for a novel. The support of my fellow Wordsmiths is invaluable, and I thank them for their encouraging words and honest critiques, and for their friendship.

Recently my husband, Les, has begun to write too. However, as the saying goes, that is a story for another day. 

Julee Stillman © April, 2012