Hello Alcasgra,
It's exactly a year since my post - the reason(s) for the late reply are (1) I'd forgotten about the site (2) I got a birthday greeting from them just now - which reminded me.
I was pretty much a dunce at school, whatever I was taught disappeared the moment school was over for the day. From then until the late nineties I read very little - mostly fiction and/or animal based. During March of '97 I took a long weekend break to Spain, the weather was fine yet all I wanted to do was write. I have never discovered if or what caused this, just that I felt at ease writing and thoughts on what I had written carried me thru sleep so that I awoke with energy and the need to write more.
In those few days I filled several exercise type pads - including reverse pages - before I put the project away.
My life then was quite orderly and very pleasant - shared love with a Princess of a partner, we owned a beautiful home on the Surrey/West Sussex borders, we both worked hard and earned well. On the 20th June 1997 I left home for the pleasant ride to my business yard, somewhere between leaving and arriving (45 minutes) I found myself telling my business partner that it was all his, I needed out and immediately - and I wanted to take nothing other than a heartfelt farewell. When I told my lady of my actions she was quite shocked, I wondered why I had said and done what I did, I felt it was to write - as in write to disk (remember them?) the Spanish inspired story.
By beginning at 10pm ish I would sit at the PC and write until dawn or just beyond. Each time I finished I knew where I would be going next session. It was not until many weeks later that I read my book 'Angels All'. It told the tale of a soul born a few years before the 20th century. Told in the 1st person it charts his early years of shire living, excitement and love all round amidst bucolic peace to the last days of WW1, when his soul completes the growth process, 500 plus pages (600 words to the page).
I felt there was too much 'padding' so I removed a lot of surround details, stuff the reader could be expected to know without having to print said stuff. This fetched the story down to 250 pages, which meant it should be described as a novella.
I didn't know what to do next except move abroad to work. So it was that one day in 2003 I found myself stranded in Portugal, having been stranded in Colorado and Brisbane I accepted mental/spiritual nudges not to be caught short again without reason. When I found myself in Portugal without income in early 2003 I had sufficient funds not to worry, so I utilised the time reading and then re-writing Angels all completely. Some of the words and the language style was alien to my shortcomings, I felt quite fraudulent to have used words and descriptions I know I had never learnt before, either during school or life. I put it away until a few years ago when I attempted to get it published, the response from publishers and agents was tepid to non-existent.
By 2008 I had written the beginnings to several books, never more than 30 pages each, before ennui and ignorance set in - again, also there were many pads full of ideas, prose, musings and suchlike. I was living in Portugal still, one day I returned home to discover an electrical fault had burned down my home; all that remained of my writings was the 1st book Angels All, now written to a CD that defied the flames.
Whoever wrote Angels All and the other stuff was not me. I read the book now and try hard to recover the feeling that created it, to no avail alas. Thus, to describe myself as a writer would be wrong, I am a man who once wrote for a hobby.
All the best to you, hope all your dreams n wishes materialise.