Origins Blogfest

So after the 'Hearing Voices' blogfest last week, I'm getting straight into another one!

Today I'm taking part in the Origin's blogfest! If you'd like to check out some of the other participants, click here to one of the co-hosts blogs, where there is an absolutely HUGE list of people taking part! There seems to be so many out there willing to share their origin stories. I'll try my best to get around them, but with class, I've only got so much time on my hands!

So here's my origin... (There was no word limit right? Because I do go on a bit...)

I've always had a creative mind. There are probably two factors to this. Number one is down to my wonderful mother. Bedtime stories were a daily event in my house when I was growing up, but quite a lot of the time, instead of reading to me from a book, my mother would make up a story on the spot, about what my teddy bears got up to when I wasn't around. I got used to the idea that stories weren't something that only came from books, but that everyone could do it! The second reason I attribute my creative mind was the fact that I spent a lot of time on my own as a child. I'm an only child, and when I was young my dad was very ill for quite a few years. Because of his illness I wasn't allowed to interact with very many other children for fear that I could bring new strains of viruses into the house that would make him worse, so I spent a lot of time playing by myself and imagining situations.

The first thing I ever wrote was on holiday's once when I was about 6 years old. It was about a bubble that I'd blown from our balcony, and it's journey to the mountains that I could see on the horizon. I don't remember the plot, but every time I talk about wanting to be a writer, my mum brings up the bubble story.

Then came Fanfiction. The first thing I wrote was an alternative ending to the 2004 movie version of Phantom of the Opera ( Gerard Butler... swoon...). I didn't even know there was a name for what I was doing until about a year later I discovered that quite a few other people on the internet liked to do the same thing! I went through several fandoms. It was the first time in my life that I'd finished a story. All through my childhood I would have started stories, but never gotten past the first few chapters. Until, that is, I found fanfiction. I fell in love with the community spirit that it gave, and the support that my stories seemed to get. I still have them all lurking around in my hard drive somewhere for nostalgia purposes.

I can't exactly pinpoint when I decided that I wanted to be a writer. It's always been there, in the background. Although it's always been what I've dreamed of being, it's always been Plan B. Unfortunately we live in a world which dictates that you need a steady source of income to be comfortable. I was never confident enough that I would be able to make a living from my writing, so instead of putting all my eggs in the writing basket, I'm studying to be a Biomedical scientist. (In case you don't know what that is, we're the people who check blood samples, and do the research behind medical and pharmaceutical methods.)

My dream to be a writer is secret from most people outside my family. A few months ago I told a friend on my degree course that it was what I wanted and she got very brisk with me, saying that some people would kill for the change to get a degree, and that if it wasn't what I really wanted, then I was robbing someone else of a place. That hurt. In my head I'm only trying to be realistic, and account for the fact that the highly subjective world of writing might not open it's doors to me.

I'm a religious person, and I believe that God has a plan for my life. I find it hard to believe sometimes that I would be gifted with a creative mind full of characters that demand to be let out of my head and onto paper, if I wasn't meant to be a writer. But at the same time, I have to be realistic. Although it's what I want, it might not be the path that's best for me. Perhaps my characters are only meant to keep me company and not to be shared with the wider world! At the end of the day, I'll still have a degree, and job prospects (however limited in this economic climate!) if my writing is just not meant to be.

So, after writing this, it's not so much my origin than my whole writing history, but once I started I just couldn't stop. I do hope I haven't bored you!

Sarah x