Why I write

Recently Freya nominated me to take part in the blog hop that's currently doing the rounds. I don't always take part in stuff like this, but I really liked the questions and thought it would be a good opportunity to think about my writing process. So here I am!

Why I write
I've loved writing all my life: at school I was the kid who always handed in ten page stories to my long-suffering teacher; the one who, when asked to produce a short project, spent every waking hour putting together a perfectly presented lever arch file on the given topic.

When I was sixteen, I discovered the world of fanzines and suddenly my writing - up to then only done in a school context - had a purpose and an audience. I wrote compulsively: gig reviews, band interviews, poetry, song lyrics, short stories, stream-of-consciousness diary entries. I still have, buried deep under piles of junk in my attic, a box containing most of what I wrote between the ages of 16 and 20. My writing style, at least in the poetry, lyrics and diary entries, can best be described as 'word vomit'. It's solipsistic adolescent bullshit at its very best (or worst), and reading it makes me both cringe and feel terribly sad for that desperate, depressed teenager.

But, in amongst the terrible song lyrics and the paeans to beautiful, long haired boys, was some evidence that I was perhaps an alright writer. The pieces I wrote for my music zine are sparky and witty and interesting (if I do say so myself!), and rediscovering the box in 2011 gave me the push I needed to start a blog. I'd been reading blogs - mostly lifestyle and fatshion ones - over the previous few months and quite liked the idea of writing again, but I was doubtful whether the blogging world was for me: was I cool enough or interesting enough? Coming across all my old writing proved to me that, even if my life itself wasn't necessarily that fascinating, I perhaps had the ability to put words together in a vaguely interesting way. And what do you know? Once I started blogging, my life started to get more interesting too.

But I suppose what I was answering there was Why did I begin to write? As to the question of why I write now, I think the thing that motivates me to carry on blogging, almost four years after I first posted here, is the community. I still get a little thrill when someone leaves a nice comment on something I've written, and nothing beats getting involved in long Twitter discussions with women I've never met but who I feel like I know because of this 'ere internet. It's pretty fab to be able to build communities online, from the comfort of my own sofa, and it suits introverted and shy people like moi down to the ground.

What I'm currently working on
For once, I don't have a huge pile of half-written posts cluttering up my drafts folder, which is worrying me slightly as I also don't have many bright ideas at the moment! One thing I would like to do is return to something I did a lot of in the first couple of years of blogging, which was writing about my weekend adventures (even when the 'adventures' were nothing more than going for a walk, reading a book and baking a cake). I love being able to look back on that record of what I got up to and I think it's a shame that I lapsed. I think I got a bit caught up in what I thought was 'cool' to blog about and started focusing too much on what I thought other people wanted to read rather than what I wanted to write about. So, expect a few more 'What I did at the weekend' or 'Lately' posts.

How my blog differs from others
In the sense that it has pictures of stuff I do, things I make, outfits I wear, and books I read, it doesn't differ too much. I think my USP (urgh, horrible term, sorry) is the fact that I combine the usual lifestyle blogger stuff with more political, feminist stuff and pieces about my own experience with everything from depression to self-harm to abortion. I think this comes from my background writing zines, where it was a case of the more confessional, the better. I haven't quite wrapped my head around the fact that big bad internet that anyone can read =/= anonymous zine.

A little bit about my writing process
I mostly sit at a table in the corner of the kitchen to write, radio playing quietly in the background, cup of tea (or glass of wine, if it's been one of those days!) on the table next to me. I seem to be at my most productive when I'm busy. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but over the summer I really struggled to write anything and as soon as I was back at school I suddenly felt the urge to write again. I think that says a lot about why I write, too: it's an escape and a way to relax.

I've passed the blog hop onto Suzy and Daire, for no other reason than I thought the questions would appeal to them. Isn't it weird how, despite never having met, I do often think in those terms about other bloggers; "Oh, so-and-so would like this film/book/post".