Was it yesterday, when I chatted away about ‘getting started’? Maybe the day before, I’m losing days left right and centre at the moment. Anyway, following on from that….today someone said to me that they had been writing and that they held me responsible. That was all I needed to hear. I know that there will have been many other reasons that this particular beaut picked up her pen. But she also qualified the point with ‘not stories’. And that made me think of another reason people might fear writing, or think they can’t do it (although I don’t think this was the case for the poet in question) but for some people, because they hear ‘creative writing’ or ‘descriptive writing’, and think that means a finished product. It’s perhaps why I had the feeling that ‘scribbles’ was the right word for what I wanted to create here. It isn’t about writing a novel or even a story. Just one word, followed by another. If you like.

When I ran creative writing club IN schools, we often only wrote for twenty minutes, and so someone might have written the start of a story, but more often than not they will have ‘just’ described something. or ‘just’ written a short piece of dialogue, that may or may not fit into something more. At school there is a massive emphasis on writing for ‘real’ situations. A letter, job application, a story competition etc. But I think writing for yourself, because it feels nice, is the most important real of all, the more people who do that, the more people believe that they can do it for a living, or to share with others.

So, just in case anyone is reading any of this, and still not actually writing anything: just see what comes out. And to today’s poet: don’t stop! xxx