For those out there who don`t know me I`ve been writing for ever! But for some years now I haven`t been focused on writing, much to my own dismay and that of a number of folk around me. I suppose I`ve been something of a disappointment because I turned my back on what looked like a promising career. Widely published, award winning and highly paid, yet I turned my back on it all in favour of a much less satisfying life in business.
Normally, I always have this sort of spiritual check up in between Christmas and New Year just as many people do. I have diaries dating back years and years where around the 1st January there is an entry lamenting my life and inability to escape "the office", that other woman that consumes all of me. It generally lasts until around the 14th January, by which time I am once more totally consumed with business and even my journal entries dry up. This has been my life for the last fifteen years.
Things are about to change. I`m coming home to my first love; to the only thing I`m actually any good at. I`ve never been of any use around the house, I`m a DIY nightmare. I can`t saw a straight line or handle a hammer. Whenever something needs doing or fixing my wife generally knows a man who can - and it`s not me! Though she does get the benefit of me in the kitchen as I`m generally considered pretty good with a wooden spoon! It`s not even as though I`ve ever really proved myself in the boardroom, though my time in business and commerce has provided the material for the next three novels.
So what has brought me to this position so early in the Advent calendar? It`s been coming for quite some time, that real urge to write; that burning desire to speak through the blank page; to take others on a journey that only we as writers control. It has been welling up in me for some months and gradually I`ve spent more and more time here in this study, my favourite place, where the real work goes on.
The simple fact is, I`m a writer and very little else. When I previously wrote (full time and professionally) I was blessed, everything seemed to fall into place. I didn`t recognise that blessing for what it was. I ignored it; turned my back on it and went headlong into business, where I rarely, if ever, experience real peace but rather anxiety and stress. The reality is that I was stupid! I didn`t look before leaping.
The transition will have to be gradual. I`ll go from five days in the office to three to enable me to write over three or four days a week until, after hopefully just a few months returning to writing all the time and leaving the business to others to run.
The next few months are going to be a challenge but I will achieve it. Why don`t you join me?