How I Felt When I First Started Writing Online.

I've been writing all my life, but most of you won't know because I started writing offline. Besides, online writing wasn't a thing when I was a child!

I started at home and school. I would have large amounts of paper on my bedroom floor from my scribbles, not just from my poems and stories, but also paper full of quotes from books and an uncountable quantity of thoughts written from the top of my head.

That beloved teacher of mine from school is still in trouble with me!

I wrote a story about four young children who set out on an adventure to rescue their father's treasure from an evil pirate.

I was about eleven years old, and I wrote four pages.

My teacher was so impressed that he refused to mark my essay until he had checked it for plagiarism.

He had convinced himself that I had copied it straight from a book!

So there I am, a person given the title 'best class story-teller' by the headteacher, laughing because I knew he was wasting his time!

He spent two weeks checking that story, only to find I was innocent.

He gave me top marks for it.

"Thank you, Sir!"

After that, I went through a lot of trauma, in which my entire life fell apart due to getting hurt because of violent relationships and communities where I was living.

I stopped writing for years because of mental health problems, fear, and having had every little bit of confidence taken from me.

I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals up to 1998, when I met my husband. I had a relapse from around 2012 when professionals triggered me by trying to get me to talk more about that horrid past, and my mental health became something they used to throw at me because I was a person who had been a victim who was a young parent with children.

They wouldn't listen to my truth.

I was heartbroken after I lost my children. I completely fell apart. I felt like a criminal for speaking out and lost interest in myself and my passions for a long time.

I lost my youngest child to adoption, which was the last straw for me. I knew that writing was something I loved, and I knew I had a creative talent.

My words were meant to be seen.

I have every intention of finding the child I lost when he turns eighteen. However, I didn't want him to see me in that horrible place I had been left in.

I wanted him to see that while the services apologized later and told me that taking my children away from me was a mistake, that something positive was to come out of it.

I was going to get strong and well, pick up that pen and become a writer and an author.

I didn't start writing online straight away. I began by writing stories and poems that expressed my feelings in private.

I started to grasp it quickly, and once my confidence grew, I started writing erotica and horror fiction.

I realized that writing was my talent, and I wanted to make a career out of it.

Enter the world of writing online.

I started here on Vocal about five years ago.

When I first started, it was nerve-wracking. I had no idea where to start, and I must have driven the staff here mad with my questions.

"Sorry Vocal!"

The staff were encouraging, and I made many mistakes because I was only used to writing with pen and paper. Eventually, I started getting top stories, and I was beaming head to foot!

A few years passed, and I decided to push my goals and try Medium.

Medium was a hard place to get noticed for a beginner, and I restarted my profile after a short while to fit with my new way of writing. Over the years, my work has started picking up, and I'm proud of that. After a while, I started writing for publications, and then I ventured into my own.

My publication is friendly fiction and poetry. It is about light-hearted fiction or poetry that makes people smile and fiction with a moral. I allow mild scenes like children fighting or mild adult fallouts, but it must be a story that has something we can learn from. I don't allow sexual content, extreme violence, horror, swearing, or other offences.

It is a publication created for those who want a safe space to read and write without the gore.

After that, I ventured into e-books

I write with Kindle Direct Publishing, though I am still working on Carrie In Love

My hair has changed since I started Carrie in Love.

I need to update the picture!

Carrie in love took a while to progress. It is a fiction based on actual lived experiences of mental health and relationships. Carrie has had problems with her mental health. She has been in some horrible relationships, and then comes Julian, who falls in love with her despite his difficulties. The two must find a way to accept each other and work together if they want the relationship to work.

I made even more progress recently, releasing a light-hearted short romance humour available in paperback and e-book formats.

This book has different cover versions.

It is a story about a young woman named Cazzie who has problems getting a boyfriend who will stay.

She can talk to women, but she can't talk to men!

She is tired of her friend Leah, who pulls all of the men, so she sets herself on a mission,

"To find a boyfriend who will stay!"

The story is a light-hearted humour.

I loved writing it!

Writing for my work to be seen by others was hard to begin with, but as you can see, I persevered, and now I am getting somewhere.

I will leave you with these words of encouragement.

Don't stare at a blank page. Write one word, and even if you have to keep re-writing that word before you form a sentence, do it! You'll soon see your writing flow. Embrace your mistakes, and forget perfection.