When I was a teenager, I wrote a column for two local newsletters entitled variously "Kidz Column" (I know. I thought I was being terribly 'cool') and, less cringe-inducingly, "Youth View". The ruling principle I took when deciding what to write each month was simply to write about whatever was on my mind at the time. I wrote reviews of films, mused about the vagaries of school life, and even once - though my mother thought it quite unsuitable for a children's column! - discussed politics. Writing for the columns earned me no small amount of fame amongst the more dedicated readers of the newsletter (by which I mean, the elderly ladies of the village always asked me what I was going to write about next when they saw me walking towards the school bus stop of a morning), and allowed me to indulge on a monthly basis my desire to play with words and, it has to be admitted, be generally opinionated about life, the universe, and everything.
The thing is, though I, like many children, went through a brief phase of wanting to be an astronaut, this ambition was early on replaced with the conviction that I would - that I had to - grow up to be a writer. As far as I was concerned, Lois Lane was the role-model to follow, and JK Rowling, whose Harry Potter stories exploded into my eight-year-old imagination with the force of a thunder storm, was my ultimate hero. (I was eight in 1999, when the Harry Potter books were less of an all-consuming franchise and more of a huge secret shared between excited children; I remember, aged maybe thirteen, sharing my best friend's pride in 'having discovered them before they got famous'). By fourteen, I had written a novel (which I marketed - oh dear! - as 'Gothic fantasy'), which I then sent to various publishers who all, at glacial speeds, rejected it, and finally flogged copies of it printed at home to friends, family, and teachers to raise money for a trip to China. The drawer beneath my bed was filled with notebooks, all in turn filled with writing (at that point, I had a fad for glittery ink of all shades, so when I open them now, my hands turn slightly sparkly). When I chose my first handbag, I made sure it was large enough to take a reading book, a pen, and a pad of paper.
To the melodramatic, teenage me who probably both amused and bemused the inhabitants of Mendlesham and Stowupland parishes in equal measure, it seemed that writing was less a hobby and more of a compulsion. I felt certain that if I could not do it, I would die, or at the very least, my imagination would wither and my heart would be left empty. My view now is a bit more balanced. Writing is certainly something that makes me feel deeply happy and fulfilled. As a historian, it satisfies me to write things down, to leave a record. Writing is also something that I want to be good at, and for that I need to practise. I have more than enough practice at academic prose to keep me going - and will, I hope, have many years more ahead of me to hone that art! - and I still keep a notepad for fiction, albeit perhaps not 'Gothic fantasy', beside my bed. But the space which those newsletter columns filled has been, up until now, noticeably uninhabited. Of late, I have found myself thinking about things (not necessarily important things - the colour of the Cambridge sky, or the exquisite torture of cross-country bus trips) and drafting paragraphs about them in my head. Hence this blog. Whatever I find myself dwelling on, that I think might be of interest to whoever might stumble across this blog - it will be written.
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