Writing

When I was young, before I went to comprehensive school, I used to write. I would make up characters and invent adventures for them to have. Then I moved up to the big school and the joy was sucked out of writing. I could still escape into a story — though how I retained that ability after enduring the painful dissection of books in English Lit class I’m still not sure — but the uninspiring teaching of English smothered my love of language and I haven’t written since.

I have these odd categorisations of things in my brain: the blogging I have done isn’t writing, well, obviously, on a technical level, it is, but in my mind, it’s more akin to talking on paper. It’s a brain dump, diarising, thinking out loud. It’s not writing. And this makes no sense to anyone but me and then only barely.

Not that writing has to be fiction. Or can’t be purely reportage. I’m not sure where the line is drawn, maybe something to do with the style. Or maybe not. But I know the difference when I write it.

I don’t apply these distinctions to other people’s writing.

Two years of proofreading and copy-editing — even though it was all technical journalism — have re-kindled an interest in writing. Nothing more specific than that. I have no burning desire to write a novel or produce a volume of poetry. But I am curious to see whether I can put fingers to keyboard and come up with something that is more than just accumulated words.

So, on the off-chance that I don’t chicken out at the thought of someone else actually reading those words, there is a new category on the blog: “Writing”.