Growing Up.

I recently turned eighteen, this theoretically makes me an 'adult', but then I've never been one for theories. Now I know eighteen is not such an ancient age, but it seems far enough removed  from the time of creating other worlds with just a cardboard box and the spark of imagination, to evoke nostalgia. I got to thinking about this change in our attitude towards imaginative artistry and I realised that maybe we are not so far away after all from the wondrous gift of childhood that allows us to create so much from so little. As a young girl, one of my favourite games was princess academy, in which I would pack up all of my belongings (much to the dismay of my parents!), grab my 'life-like' baby doll and get on the train to the academy. Now it didn't even occur to me, as a seven year old that the train was only a mattress laid out on the floor, for all the while I was immersed in my personal world of fantasy, I could feel the shake of the carriages and hear the shrill 'all aboard' whistle echoing in my head. This image all sounds very nostalgic and cosy in retrospect, but I found myself asking, where is the difference to what I do now in my writing and painting. Other than physically acting out stories (the thought of which however is quite amusing), are all writers not immersed in the fantasy worlds they have created? - only choosing, now they have the appropriate words, to convey these feats of the imagination to others. Therefore I came to the conclusion in my thoughts, essentially that we never loose the childhood ability to imagine outrageously and that to sustain the talent, to exercise it, we must write down the worlds and the voices in our heads.
This point is where my blog comes in, as the means to exercise the imaginative talent and to show this to the rest of you. I had all but given up on my creative writing, I was so busy with school work, my many other passions and a smidge of a social life. However a recent re-introduction to role playing had my creative writing imagination fired up more than I could ignore. I know role playing is not the most advanced form of writing, and many plots follow the same pattern and setting, however I would sincerely recommend it as a creative exercise. In my opinion, it is one of the best ways of creating a rounded character if you put the effort in. Here is the opportunity to have a character interact, respond to and form bonds with other characters which you do not control. As unpredictable and difficult as role playing can be, I believe many writers allow their characters to get their own way a lot of the time, a kind of favouritism I suppose! The course of a narrative can be turned around completely in a role play, and the actions of other characters are out of your control - allowing a writer to really imagine how their character would respond to the actions of others, instead of shaping the actions of others around the narrative of the central characters. This essentially gives a more realistic feel to a story as no character has the benefit of knowing what will happen next - as I have discovered in some shocking plot twists myself! This experience has encouraged me to create characters in my head, voices that will not be ignored!


In this blog I plan to write windows into the lives of my many characters, and I hope that in time you will grow to feel for them as I do.


Let me introduce you to the voices in my head.