As you may know I have just completed (sort of*) a month long marathon of words and have surpassed the 50000 word target of NaNoWriMo becoming a “winner”. I couldn’t have done this without the support of the @freewritehouse and more importantly @mariannewest.

Without Marianne’s daily #freewrite prompt I would not be posting on steemit everyday and I would not have been writing something every day for the last year. There is no way that just over a year ago I would have thought I could have written 50000 words in a month. But I did. And that is thanks to @mariannewest.

But what drives me to write?

Is it the money?

Nope.

I write because I have always wanted to write from the age when I first got hooked on reading (about 8 years old, reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books: before that I didn’t really read, but my headteacher advised my mum to read me a chapter or two and I would soon want to find out what happens next so would read myself. She was right).

As a kid, and adolescent I used to write but never really got anywhere mostly because I would tell myself it was crap (I still remember one teacher very fondly who was the first person I could genuinely tell was impressed by my writing).

I wrote because I loved to read and I loved that feeling of being carried away in a book. Being driven to stay up late when I should be sleeping because I wanted to find out what happened next. I wanted to be able to do that.

For years I made excuses why I couldn’t write, mostly to do with time, sometimes to do with ideas. Anything I started I would run out of steam (way before Steem was imagined) because I would either edit it to death to get the perfect first paragraph or I would try to plan it out and get overwhelmed.

When I moved to France 11 years ago I told myself I now had the chance to do what I wanted to do: write. So I joined a forum and entered their weekly short story contest (that was only held every fortnight!). You had to use a prompt, and I found I could use that and write a short story. I would use the two weeks to edit it to perfection and sometimes I would win, and more often I would not even get a mention. So for a while I produced two short stories a month.

I kind of stopped writing, after a while because I spent more time on the forum than actually writing. I did go through a short phase on Tsu (remember that, anyone?) of writing but then I did nothing for a year or more.

I joined steemit in June 2016 and left after two weeks because it was so hard to connect with anyone. Out of curiosity I came back in November 2017 and almost straight away stumbled upon @mariannewest’s freewrite prompt.

Such a simple idea.

Just write for five minutes. It doesn’t matter what you write. It doesn’t have to make sense.

It doesn’t even have to have a proper ending.

Freedom.

Seriously, who can really find an excuse NOT to find five minutes to write SOMETHING?

You’d have to spend more than five minutes coming up with that excuse, right?

So for over a year I have been writing something every day. Sometimes 165 words, sometimes 2000. It didn’t matter. And then I thought I could do the NaNoWriMo thing. That write a novel in a month thing that I had thought was impossible before because I knew I would fail because I couldn’t write every day.

So I practiced. In the summer I wrote 1000 words every day for two weeks.

And @mariannewest, @ntowl and I hatched a plan (it was mostly the first two, I was not hatching very much of anything!)

And then @mariannewest announced it and we had no choice but to DO IT.

And we bloody well did it.

And you know it was easy for the first few days.

And then it was HARD.

REALLY HARD.

You know who got me through it?

Yes, I had the support of my fellow freewritemadness folk. But the people who really helped me were @dranuvar, @whatisnew, and later @girlbeforemirror.

Why?

Because they were writing comments that reminded me of when I was a teenager, reading late at night in my room, coming to the end of a chapter of a novel I was really into and wondering, what is happening next? and yeah, but if that happened earlier, then what could that mean?

They started to love characters and hate characters (well, they gave me the impression they did) and speculate on what was happening, who was doing what to who. And being surprised when something new fell out of my head.

And that is why I write.

I write because I want to know what happens next too. I write because I want to surprise myself. To grow characters I love and hate. But to have the impression that my writing does that for others: THAT IS PRICELESS.

Thank you so much to all the people who commented on my Tiny story in November, but especially @dranuvar, @whatisnew, and @girlbeforemirror: you guys rock.

As a little token of my gratitude to you (and it is just that: a Tiny token - if I had more I would give it willingly!) I have given an SBI share to :

@dranuvar, @whatisnew, @girlbeforemirror for keeping me focused on my story and reminding me of why I write.

I am giving @mariannewest one because I wouldn’t have been writing without her.

@ntowl is getting one because (I am sure @mariannewest won’t mind me saying) if it wasn’t for her we might have chickened out! @ntowl was the driving force and the technical genius behind the tracking of numbers of the entire #freewritemadness thing.

If you haven’t been mentioned it is not that I don’t appreciate you! There are too many of you who have helped me through the last month and year, and helped me grow as a writer and Steemian.

I hope that everyone else, all the people who have commented and supported will accept the SBI share I am giving to the @freewritehouse, which will help support the entire #freewrite community

Thank you everyone!

And on to the next adventure!*

_{* obviously I still haven’t finished the Tiny story… I will be finishing in the next week or so, promise! One half chapter at a time! :)}

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