Abby Willson

The Ramblings Of An Writer

Before the thought of taking pen to paper crossed my mind, I was creating functional worlds with me at the epicentre of it all. These nightly adventures exploring treasure coves and riding dragons, helped me block out the monsters crawling under my bed. And as I became older and began to realise that these monsters did not just hide under my bed, these worlds and adventures become my nightly escape. With time these worlds became more elaborate, the foes became more devious and the mechanics of the worlds became more complex. One winter’s evening after facing some of realities scariest monster’s I had the bright idea of mapping these worlds on paper, in an effort to invite other adventurers to have a realm that they can escape to, whenever reality became too overwhelming to face. My nightly adventures always helped me put my current problems into perspective, these worlds acted as a type of sandbox, allowing me to recreate my problems more vividly, giving me the courage to fight on. I was and still am new to the world of writing, and in the beginning, my mindset was rather naive. Reading blogs on ‘how to become a writer in a year’, and taking part in writing boot camps gave me the impression that to be a writer you would need to write 1000 words a day, do some research have a few good ideas and magically you would create a Wizarding world. This bubble was quickly popped, yes someday those 1000 words quickly fill the lines on my pages, other days the ink refuses to leave the pen. I started to realise that my brain and hand were not on the same page, I battled to print the picture I had in my mind onto paper, everything made sense to me, but once the words I had written down were spoken out in the open the magic was lost.