Creative Writing

Having just finished my latest piece of writing ..........and this doesn't somehow include this blog, though writing it certainly is, this made me reflect on the fact that for over 50 years I have been in a very small way writing. Clearly I am not on the best sellers list nor the acknowledged authority on some important science or philosophy, but I think with all due modesty that I have been able to find an outlet for my creative inner being through words. Probably just as well, as art and music are ones that having tried at various times, I clearly lack any talent.

My earliest recollection, omitting school essays, was a short fictional piece on the origin and habits of the haggis, I am not even sure I have a copy, that being in the days of typewriters not computers. I did some other short pieces when the muse took me, including ones designed to impress young ladies. I ventured into poetry occasionally, again memory is dimmed by age, but I think I penned my late wife a poem, which as she did marry me can't perhaps been that bad.

I did some more non fiction for the College Magazine back in the late 60s and this was probably the first actually published by someone else piece, this was about the perceived differences between University and Polytechnic. Of course Polytechnics have all now been upgraded to University so history has rendered this first effort irrelevant.

The non fiction theme continues as, related to my work, I submitted and had published, several pieces to professional journals. The fictional root briefly flourished when I did, I think for three years or so, a Christmas Story for my Department at Asda. Full of insider references that even I cannot remember now, I was reminded of them quite recently when a old colleague made contact via that strange beast called Facebook and admitted she had just found a copy when clearing out, she didn't say whether having found it, she then cleared it out properly or put it back into storage for future generations. I don't think I will ask.

More recently I have taken up the pen as an adjunct to various hobbies I was involved in. I became the newsletter editor for the Pines Park Archers, a Field Archery Club, and as anyone who has ever taken on this job knows, the editor doesn't just edit but usually has to create most of the content ! I enlivened the editions with some short fiction and as well as in the Club, some got published in the National Field Archery Society's magazine, fame indeed.

I have been following a similar vein with my Greenlaning (see other post) and have submitted and had printed both factual articles and more whimsical humourous pieces.

They say that everyone has one novel in them, well I have tried to extract my novel and at the current time have three on the go. One is a Science Fiction piece on time travel, one is a French Detective in Britttany and the last and most progressed, thirteen chapters in the hard drive, is about......well its about people, families, relationships and fears, hopes and aspirations with a bit of travel, some romance and sex and themes from the world..........interestingly I wrote this with the absolute vanity that it would make a great film. This is maybe from my other creative writing strand which was screenplays and scripts for training and corporate communication, with Asda and later Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Police.

I am not sure why the novels got stalled and I tell myself, as no one else is interested, though maybe now I have confessed on the web, others may, that it was time and other distractions. Perhaps but I find that writing has to come, you have an idea and follow it. Just like todays blog which I though about it for some reason and then immediately took to the keyboard.

The novel ............ oh well as you asked so nicely ............... is called "the Start of Something Else" and writing it has shown that my creative track is very loose, I like to write and move on, but having not finished it, I have to go back and read the chapters I have, before I can pick up again. Sometimes a new idea pops into my head and very often when I do sit to write I have some mental plan but the fingers on the keyboard take over and what emerges is different, hopefully better, but who knows. I keep telling myself to finish it, even just for my own sense of achievement and of course with the hope that it will be published, I will sell the screen rights and become rich and famous.

In the meantime I shall hopefully continue writing and creating, after all its a harmless pursuit.