Blog 94 - For the Love of Writing

Blog 94 - For the Love of Writing

November 2025

Ah, the writer's life. Images of dusty attics, steaming mugs of coffee, and perhaps a brooding genius staring meaningfully out a window. While the coffee and staring are often accurate, the dusty attic is usually just my office at 3AM, and the brooding genius is more likely to be me wrestling with whether 'serendipitous' is truly the perfect word. (Take it from me…it is.)
But beyond the clichés, there's a profound, often understated joy that threads through the daily act of putting words on a page. And if you ask me to honestly say what it is that I really love about writing, I wouldn't hesitate for a second. It's the glorious, unadulterated fact that it is, at its heart, a solitary endeavour.
For years, decades even, my working life has been a relentless symphony composed by someone else. I march to the beat of other people's drums. I wear the uniform, adhere to the schedule, met the targets, and navigate the corporate Bullshit politics of someone else’s grand vision. And let me tell you, sometimes that drumbeat feels less like a motivating rhythm and more like a headache-inducing clang.
Don't get me wrong, there are good bits. All be it, too few to mention, but still beneath it all, there is always that underlying current of external control. Decisions aren't truly mine, and the ones that are made by others rarely make any sense. Mistakes beyond my immediate sphere of influence have consequences that resonate in my world but over which I have no control. For years I thought I was doomed to this pitiful existence but then came writing.
And suddenly, the orchestra was just... me. My pen, my keyboard, my thoughts. The silence, punctuated only by the clack of keys or the scratching of ink, and it was the sweetest music I'd ever heard.
When I write, there is just me. And it is glorious. It is my decision what to write and when to write it. Picture this: I can decide, on a whim, that today is a day for dragons. Or perhaps a Space flight. If the muse whispers ‘Science Fiction' at 3 AM, I don't need a committee meeting to approve the project. I just... start writing.
I set my own goals, my own timeline, my own agenda. Gone are the days of quarterly reviews where my performance was measured against matrix’s I had no hand in creating. Now, my goals are deeply personal. "Finish this chapter." "Explore that character's backstory." "Write 1000 words about the sheer joy of writing." (See what I did there?)
If I mess it up – and oh, I mess it up often – there is only me to answer to. This isn't a burden; it's a liberation. Think about it. In a traditional workplace, a mistake can ripple outwards. It can affect colleagues, clients, deadlines, budgets. There's a formal process, sometimes an awkward conversation, perhaps even a ding on your record.

In my writing world? If I write a thousand words that are utter dross, a tangled mess of clichés and half-baked ideas, I can do several things:
• Berate myself: (Usually involves a dramatic sigh and a muttered, "What were you thinking, you absolute amateur?")
• Forgive myself: (Because tomorrow is a new day, and even Shakespeare had bad sonnet days, probably.)
• Scrap what I have done and start again: The delete key is a divine gift. The blank page is not a symbol of failure, but of infinite possibility.
• Try and fix my mistakes: Edit, rephrase, re-plot, cut, paste, expand. It's like literary surgery, and I'm both the meticulous (or occasionally clumsy) surgeon and the patient.
The point is it’s entirely up to me. There's no HR department to consult, no performance review to dread, no team meeting to explain myself in. Just me and the words, locked in a dance of creation and correction. And honestly, that deeply personal accountability is incredibly empowering. It fosters growth in a way that external pressure rarely does. It teaches resilience, self-compassion, and the invaluable lesson that failure is just feedback, waiting to be interpreted by you.
In a world that has seemingly gone mad, writing is my safe haven. It's a quiet room where the noise of global news, social media, and daily anxieties fade into a distant hum. When I sit down to write, I step into my own created universe. I control the weather, the characters' fates, even the very laws of physics, if I so choose. The anxieties of the real world disappear, and the focus becomes whether my protagonist will escape the clutches of the nefarious Professor Blunderbuss, or if the ancient prophecy will finally be fulfilled by a talking squirrel.
I can’t overstate this; I truly believe that it has become a medication that I just can’t do without. It’s a mindful practice, a form of active meditation and a therapy session all rolled into one. The focus required to craft a sentence, to build a paragraph, to weave a narrative, pulls me entirely into the present moment. The worries about bills, future plans, or that embarrassing thing I said last Tuesday simply don't have room to wriggle into the narrative flow. It's a place where my imagination isn't just tolerated; it's the very foundation of everything. Where the wildest ideas can be explored, the deepest emotions can be given voice, and the most complex problems can be untangled (even if only fictional ones). It's a sanctuary for the mind, and a playground for my soul.
Some might look at the idea of a "solitary endeavour" and think, "How lonely!" And yes, there are moments of solitude, but it's rarely loneliness. When I'm writing, I'm never truly alone. I'm in the company of my characters, my research, my ideas, and the endless possibilities of language. It's a different kind of companionship, one that is deeply intimate and internal. It's the friendship of a mind fully engaged with its own creations, a spirit stretching its wings in an uncaged space. Every thousand words I write is a small victory, a new brick in the personal castle I'm building. These are my words, born from my imagination, shaped by my effort. They are a testament to the quiet power of self-direction, the profound joy of creation, and the simple, undeniable pleasure of marching to the beat my own drum. And I absolutely, unequivocally, utterly love it.