The Accidental Author

Chapter 1 - Introduction - everyone has a story

Throughout my adult life I often fantasized about the idea of being a writer, it's probably the secret earth mother hippie that lurks within me. I imagined myself in flowing tie-dye smock style dresses, sitting at one with nature with my notepad and pen creating stories for others to read. In the past I shared my vision of being a writer with close friends and family and in doing so I often quoted the cliché, 'everyone has a book in them.' At the time, I had no real idea of what 'my book' if I ever wrote one, would be about. However, hanging on to this adage my dream of being a published author never disappeared, it merely lay dormant waiting to be realised.

In my various roles throughout my nursing and business career, I utilised my amateur writing skills to produce articles and newsletters related to my skills and experience. However, it was not until I started my diplomas that I started to believe that there was more for me to achieve. Since childhood I have always kept a diary, as most girls do. Initially I used it to document the highs and lows of teenage life and loves, a sort of Adrian Mole's Diary for girls! As I progressed into my adult life and motherhood, every time I experienced something good, bad or challenging, I felt the urge to write about it as a form of cathartic therapy. Until the events of 11th January 2011 I had never considered that my personal experiences would ever be material for my 'one book inside me.'

Two weeks after the Brisbane floods, on a hot and humid morning we sat in our caravan on our plot of woodland in outback Queensland contemplating our future. As usual we resorted to writing a list of our options; actions that we needed to take and ideas for moving forward with our lives after losing our home to flood water. Fortunately, in hindsight, we did not realise then how this event would affect so many areas of our lives because if we had then some of the choices we made may well have been different. Firstly, we had no idea that we would not be covered by our insurance for flood damage. Secondly, we couldn't foresee that we would lose our house, our woodland and car as a result of voluntary bankruptcy in 2012 to repay the mortgage on an uninhabitable house. In our blissful ignorance to these upcoming changes to our lives we sat talking about hopes and dreams. Somehow, despite my normal positive approach to the challenges of daily life, I debated missed opportunities, obviously a negatively geared conversation topic. I leaned toward negativity in relation to not achieving my writing ambitions, even though I had never actually defined any!

My husband Nigel, always positive and brutally honest said, "If you want to be a writer you need to just do it. Do something about it, learn how to write or just write something."

I pondered these harsh, yet true, straight-talking words, taking them to heart and sulking for an appropriate period of time before realising that he was right. I had no one to blame but myself for my non achievements. I was the only one who could make it happen. I could continue talking and moaning about it, or take some action. If I really wanted to write, then that was my dream to chase. So I did. Taking immediate action while the emotions surged within me, still living in a caravan in Millmerran Woods I enrolled in two distance learning diploma courses: A Diploma in Journalism and a Diploma in Creative Writing. I even started my first assignment, in our caravan as we were still trying to work out our future living arrangements and location.

One year on, and we had relocated and were settling down to life in Tasmania. After Nigel and I found work I was able to focus my spare time on studying for my diplomas. The renewed enthusiasm this created enhanced my belief that I could achieve some form of writing career in the future and that was all I needed. On the weekends when Nigel was working I studied. Then by adjusting my normal full-time working hours into longer days I managed to have one full day off a fortnight dedicated to writing. I finally felt able to call myself a writer, working at building my writing career. As part of my journalism diploma I created a business plan to become a freelance writer. This included business objectives such as publishing articles in health and nursing oriented magazines. Setting my goal for my creative writing diploma I pledged to write and publish at least one book. At that point I knew little about self-publishing. I had read and downloaded books by self-published 'Indie' authors, but I had no interest in knowing how or what that entailed because I thought all good books were taken on and published by the traditional publishers.

With so many ideas, projects and drafts saved I had enough material to work on indefinitely. I started my blog, 'Everyone Has a Story' to record my writing journey. It is from this humble starting point using my experience of blogging and self-publishing three travel memoirs that I am now sharing my acquired knowledge in the hope that it will help other aspiring authors to gain the confidence and information needed to at least have a go and to give self-publishing the consideration it deserves, even though I left it very late. I look forward to sharing the pursuit of my writing dreams with you.