Writing

I began writing in 2014 when I took part in a 10 week creative writing course at the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Arts (SVCA), part of the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The course was linked to an exhibition running there at the time. The idea was to choose a piece of art and from your reaction to the piece, develop a short story as the tutor guided us through the basics of creative writing.

This is the piece I chose:

Anthony Green. “My Mother Alone in Her Dining Room”

I experienced a very strong reaction to the painting.

This was my mother.

As I wrote and completed my story, my emotions and feelings were strong and challenging. They took me by surprise. Fortunately as a trained psychotherapist, I was able to monitor, be my own observer and take care of my needs. The course helped me not only improve my writing but during those ten weeks, I discovered the power of writing for therapy or writing for wellbeing. I also discovered a strong need to write the type of story that delivers a message and invites the reader to enquire of themselves and to grow as a person. The sort of story I like to read.

Since then, I have written numerous short stories (four that have been published in an anthology), the first draft of a memoir (81k words) and a partly completed first draft of a novel. I find the process of  writing very therapeutic.

Currently, my focus is flash fiction and poetry.