The beginning. Or is it?

Where does a story begin? With an idea? A plan? A verb? Is it tributaries coming together to create a river? When the river forms a lake?

I’ve been accepted onto an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths in London. A two-year part-time course which starts in September.

Is that where it starts?

Or did it start before Christmas when my husband suggested a creative writing course as a present?

Or in 2016 when I started work intentionally on a novel?

Or did it start when I learned to read and write, when I fell in love with words and books and stories?

The MA is as good a place as any to start this part of the story. I’m setting out on a creative writing course because I want to learn to write. Of course I can already write. I write all the time, for work, journalling, morning pages, emails, cards, most recently a speech at a funeral. But writing a novel is a whole different order of writing. There are so many things I don’t know. I want to learn. I want to experiment, be provoked, challenged, nudged, supported, educated. I want to learn to be a writer, and I am determined to give my best effort to becoming a published writer who gets paid for her work.

But what does all this mean for the work that currently pays the bills? I’m a coach, helping women leaders overcome the societal barriers and personal self-doubts that hold them back from being truly successful in senior jobs, confidently, authoritatively and with impact.

I have a dilemma. Do I carry on with that work? If I do, how will I prioritise writing, so I get the most out of the course and throw myself wholeheartedly into making writing a success?

Plus, my Mum died earlier this year. She had dementia and my brother and I have been caring for her, in different ways, ever since Dad died in 2021. It’s got increasingly demanding and stressful. My brother had a heart attack (yes, really), I’m exhausted. I’d like to take some time off to properly recover. But I run my own coaching business. If I take time off, I will potentially undo all the hard work I’ve put into building up a client base. But if I don’t, and if I try to do coaching work alongside writing, will the writing suffer? The writing is really where my heart is now. And I am learning that life is unpredictable and finite and not to be wasted. I will get some kind of inheritance from Mum. I get my pension next year. I don’t need to earn. I’d like to earn, but I don’t need to. What is stopping me taking a few months off? What is stopping me saying I’m carrying on with my existing clients, and stopping all the effort that goes into finding new ones?

So for a while, I’m going to do both. Carry on with my existing clients, give myself a bit of a break, and start focusing on writing. Buying the books on the reading list. Starting this Substack.

“Writing Life” is about the experience of creating a life based around writing, and what I’ve learned from my coaching work and my own experience about life and making life changes.

So here we are. The beginning of something. Who knows where the story will take us?