Weekend writing course

I'm back from my weekend in a country house writing. This means I have now shown some of my work to other people, IRL, and lived.

I had a great time, met a set of very interesting characters, and did writing exercises and talked about writing almost non-stop for a few days. There was a very gentle introduction to reading out our writing: starting with a few sentences about why we were on the course, followed by a selection of favourite words and then a paragraph using one of them.

I've belatedly 'remembered' (i.e. let myself remember) how I always thought I 'wanted to be a writer' from approximately two feet tall and then realised writers generally showed their writing to other people. So that was the end of that, then: I'd been bullied pretty much from the word go at various schools, and the last thing I would ever feel safe doing would be to give out extra-effective ammunition in the form of handwritten keys to my inner thoughts.

The discovery that I can actually do this was made in tandem with being reminded that other forms of writing exist, besides fiction, and the suggestion that I might like to try some of them. We'll see.

I did a couple of OU activity exercises in an insomniac 1 a.m. moment too, meaning I am only about 13 behind.