Hi everyone,
Before introducing myself I set out to say hi to all the newbies on the first page but the slowness of the forum and the having to log in several times during the process defeated me. Sorry, newbies - I really wanted to.
First up, let me say how excited I am to be on an actual forum, with an actual community. Like - genuinely excited. I've had an online life for a long time now, and as much as I use social media (too much, probably) it's just not the same for community, support, common interests, and relationships.
About me. I'm a working writer of many years - I went pro when I was in my teens and I'm in my middle ages now - and teacher of writing for 25+ years. Professionally I've mostly concentrated on articles and personal essays (or as they're mostly known by people who hate the E-word, opinion pieces) although I love short fiction have a few books under my belt too, one of them a romantic comedy. About seven years back I turned to the dark side: marketing. Not just that, I found a niche - content marketing - and found that I really loved it and was good at it. These days manage the content marketing for one of Australia's largest companies. Sweet.
Not so sweet is that outside the occasional blog post I haven't written creatively, for myself, for about ten years. Life threw several curve balls at me that put me in survival mode, and survival mode elbowed my personal labours of love out of the way. I even stopped reading fiction, something that the person I used to be would have considered unthinkable. So while I'm writing, and editing, it's for other people, and the lack of a creative outlet has for the past couple of years become unbearable and kinda brought on a midlife crisis of sorts. I need to get back to it because it's killing me not to do it.
But guys... I'm rusty. So rusty. So I'm here for the accountability and the inspiration, and hopefully to help out and contribute. You're all my lifeline for getting back to myself and getting back to my thriving creative self, but hey - no pressure.
Before introducing myself I set out to say hi to all the newbies on the first page but the slowness of the forum and the having to log in several times during the process defeated me. Sorry, newbies - I really wanted to.
First up, let me say how excited I am to be on an actual forum, with an actual community. Like - genuinely excited. I've had an online life for a long time now, and as much as I use social media (too much, probably) it's just not the same for community, support, common interests, and relationships.
About me. I'm a working writer of many years - I went pro when I was in my teens and I'm in my middle ages now - and teacher of writing for 25+ years. Professionally I've mostly concentrated on articles and personal essays (or as they're mostly known by people who hate the E-word, opinion pieces) although I love short fiction have a few books under my belt too, one of them a romantic comedy. About seven years back I turned to the dark side: marketing. Not just that, I found a niche - content marketing - and found that I really loved it and was good at it. These days manage the content marketing for one of Australia's largest companies. Sweet.
Not so sweet is that outside the occasional blog post I haven't written creatively, for myself, for about ten years. Life threw several curve balls at me that put me in survival mode, and survival mode elbowed my personal labours of love out of the way. I even stopped reading fiction, something that the person I used to be would have considered unthinkable. So while I'm writing, and editing, it's for other people, and the lack of a creative outlet has for the past couple of years become unbearable and kinda brought on a midlife crisis of sorts. I need to get back to it because it's killing me not to do it.
But guys... I'm rusty. So rusty. So I'm here for the accountability and the inspiration, and hopefully to help out and contribute. You're all my lifeline for getting back to myself and getting back to my thriving creative self, but hey - no pressure.
