I have been doing some housekeeping here on my blog, updating various pages, editing, changing eliminating… One of the pages I have been tweaking is ‘Something about me…’ a brief biography. Should I make it longer, or would that be boring? Should I write more about my non-writing life, or really are people more interested in what I produce? I’m not sure.. I’ll ponder…
In case you haven’t visited my page, here’s what I say about myself:
Something about me…
I have always made up stories; I told stories when I was tiny and wrote them down as soon as I learned to write. I can’t remember my early work, it was usually about orphans for some reason, and I remember one memorable line “Gourds, take him away!” Spelling never was my strong suit! I wrote a lot of poetry throughout my teenage years and when I was in my early twenties I had several short stories published in ‘Honey’, a women’s magazine.
The first full length novel I wrote was set partly in the south of France and partly in Somerset and was a family saga. My next attempt was a rather ghastly love story… ghastly it may have been but some of the themes have reappeared in later work. I then wrote a mystery and although it will never see the light of publishing day, it had strong characters, a simple but fairly gripping plot and an exciting and quite violent conclusion.
Before I was able to write full-time, I was a teacher and teaching is a draining occupation, your head is full of stuff and it’s difficult at the end of the day to sweep the stuff away and become creative. Someone once told me being a teacher is like being a battery, your students plug into you and drain you; you go home and recharge and go back and they plug in again. That’s why teachers need long holidays, but after so many years the charge doesn’t take and the battery becomes emptier and emptier… I was lucky to escape for a while and have my own children. Before I went back to work, I had a great creative burst and wrote and wrote and wrote.
I returned to teaching, but in a challenging and very different sort of school, which I loved, and was extremely rewarding. I managed to retain my creativity but my output slowed. Now, thank goodness, I no longer work in a day job, I can do what I always dreamed of doing,write full-time. I am a writer!
Here’s a link to my books – please do read them and let me know what you think!!
Lois Elsden 