Reflections on My Writing Journey

A Lifelong Love Affair with Storytelling

This week, I've been listening to podcasts where authors have shared their writing journeys. Each path is unique in its entirety. It led me to reflect on my writing and storytelling journey so far. and I hope that it will encourage you to ponder your journey too.

I've realised that to produce better quality work as a writer, a lot of self-exploration of our past, internal monologues, struggles, and strengths is necessary. understanding the authentic human element within us all helps us in our pursuit to create relatable and compelling characters in our stories. In this post, I delve into my past to discover where the tendrils of my storytelling path took hold.

Childhood Play

Looking back at the interests and hobbies we gravitated towards as young children - before too much external judgment and influence made a mark - gives us a glimpse of what we organically find enjoyable and fulfilling.

For me, creativity and storytelling in some form were always front and centre. I loved playing with Barbies, giving them personalities, and families, and setting them off on pretend scenarios. I told stories through them.

I loved to draw, mostly characters of my own creation. I picked names for them out of the phone book, gave them traits, and brought them to life.

I was the producer, director, and screenwriter of lounge room plays and musicals my sister and I performed for our parents. If my cast of one went off script, there was hell to pay.

Early Writing Attempts

As I got older and learned to write, I wrote short stories, poems and songs. When I was about 12, I even tried to write a book-length story eerily similar to Superman, but with a female lead. I lost interest after chapter two, but I did create illustrations to match. I also enjoyed flipping through the dictionary to learn new words.

My sister and I loved making movies around the house with our chunky 90s home video camera. Sometimes we used my short stories as the script.

The Sims

When The Sims came along, my storytelling morphed into gameplay. The Sims was my canvas to make stories come to life before my eyes, and I was hooked. As I got older, I even had blogs dedicated to telling the stories that unfolded within the game.

High School Drama

In high school, I wasn't the English kid. I was the drama kid. My parents put me in extracurricular drama class in primary school to help me come out of my shell, and in high school, I excelled at it, gaining top marks in my class year after year. But I knew I never wanted to be an actor. The idea of having to rehearse and remember lines and perform on stage made me anxious and opposed my introverted nature. Instead, it was the screenwriting portion of the subject that lit me up and inspired me the most.

In my senior year, I threw everything into a theatre script about the 1974 floods in Brisbane. My drama teacher adored it and told me I should submit it to local theatres. My self-doubt held me back, but knowing someone I admired said I was good at this, and the fact that I felt like it was something I wanted to do, propelled me forward mentally.

Shifting Focus to Screen Writing

Once I left school, I kept writing in the form of blogs about my life and interests, but the thought of being an author never actually entered my mind. It was while watching the last Harry Potter movie on TV that this curious thought popped into my mind - "I could do that. I could write something like that."

So, because of my drama background and previous praise for my theatre script, I dove into learning all there was to know about screenwriting to pull an epic space opera story out of my mind and onto the page.

Halfway through drafting that story, I felt inspiration again, this time to write a jukebox musical after watching "Rock of Ages." That story took off on the page, and I actually finished the first draft, which was amazing. But then I fell flat with the thought, "What do I do now?"

I studied marketing and worked in a corporate job. I didn't know anyone or have any ties with the theatre or movie-making world. So that story disappeared into a folder on my computer. I came to the same realisation with my sci-fi script. No one would make that space-based beast into a movie unless, perhaps, it was a very successful book first.

Transition to Fiction Writing & Novels

From that moment, I realised I should be writing my stories as novels instead. I started studying the craft around my blogging hobby and reading fiction books during my commute too. Unlike many authors I come across, I was not an avid reader through school. I occasionally picked up books that I devoured, such as Goosebumps, R.L. Stein and Paul Jennings books, and then set them aside to follow other interests. It was never front and centre, and I almost feel ashamed to say I never read the Harry Potter books either, despite their popularity.

Rediscovering a Passion for Reading

I discovered a vigour for fiction reading in adulthood that was sparked by my desire to learn more about the craft to get my stories out there into the world. I read modern and trending fantasy and sci-fi stories, from Throne of Glass and Mistborn to the Illuminae Files and Children of Time.

Writing as a Career

Eventually, my blog writing paired with my marketing degree helped me step into a full-time writing career as a content writer for an SEO agency. I could officially say I wrote for a living, and I enjoyed my work writing marketing content, but I was still stealing pockets of spare time to write creatively on the side.

Overcoming Self-Doubt

Despite many years of writing in the marketing space, I never took my creative writing seriously. I convinced myself it would never amount to anything. My stories don't mean anything. Finishing and publishing a book is too hard. No one would buy or read my stories anyway.

But I have since had a mindset shift in my 30s with a family under my wing to tend to and life careering past like a freight train. I want to do the thing that fills up my cup. Writing and storytelling fills up my cup.

Maybe people will like to read my stories, or maybe they won't, but I'm going to enjoy the journey, take the pressure off, and just write what I want to write, with zero expectations for the outcome.

Embracing the Journey

I see the pursuit of writing and publishing a novel as a challenge that is giving me a sense of purpose and self-gratification beyond my family and kids. Beyond the writing I’m doing here in Substack, I also want to prove to myself that I can write a full novel-length story, finish it and publish it.

To steal the sentiment from the Peter Pan Quote, this is how I see it:

To write and publish a novel would be an awfully big adventure.

Yes, writing is fun, but it's also hard, especially when looking at all the publishing and marketing challenges that go with it. There's a lot of fear and hesitation around the hard bits but excitement and anticipation swirl in equal parts too.

Your Writing Journey

So tell me, what does your writing journey look like? How has it shaped the writer you are today?

Let me know in the comments below or share it in your own Substack and tag me so I can read it 😊.