The A Side ✔

13- Writing Not Speaking

I have to admit something, public speaking isn't my strong suit. My friends from school were all outgoing and brimming with confidence and being the odd one out since looking directly at someone wasn't perfect. That's why all I remember mainly with lunchtime conversations is the carpet in the hallway. When I turned 14 and started using Wattpad daily, I felt for the first time that using my own thoughts and written words, this would be the perfect way to express myself to other people, my close family and friends and total strangers. After the tragic passing of my best friend in 2010, school wasn't a happy place for me. Avoiding loud crowds and busy queues of students queueing for lunch, I would sit alone in a classroom with a notebook and just write. It felt like sitting alone in my bedroom at home, having no cares and not following any rules about what to write and how to write. Freedom for me.

When I started writing Fizzy Like Cola aged 14, there was this weird feeling that I couldn't shake off when I was in the process of planning and writing it. The characters in the novella Emeli and Wayne both fictional somehow made me just that little bit more confident. Wayne was a total badass and Emeli was just a mirror image of myself but writing the story out chapter by chapter, didn't just help my written English but it also helped exactly what I want in life. I wanted a friend just like Emeli and date my own little bad boy (I would date one a year after finishing the story) but what I mean is that my own school teachers couldn't get me to say a single word because I physically wouldn't open my mouth. That's where writing came in.

After writing A Shoulder To Cry On (which at the time of writing this chapter, I'm slowly editing and re-writing), I was just 15 and the main character was double my age, married and working in a office. Having no experiences of either of those things, I still wrote just because it helped me to bring grief and loss out in the way that I portrayed it. When my friend passed away, I felt a huge chunk of my heart break away and a part of me missing for good. Writing about Elena who experiences grief was difficult at times but on showing it to one of my teachers, she read the whole story and ended up crying about it. The first thing to start racing through my head was did she find the story too sad? Was Elena not a believable character? But when she told me that I had a gift for writing, that really got me thinking. Maybe I could make something out of this, writing could end up becoming my guardian angel...

Whilst a student at College, my writing was minimal primarily because I got some hate about it from other students but when I did write, it was for song lyric escapes more than anything. I wrote a song called Waterfall about a girl getting over a break-up and falling drowned under all of her tears pouring down her face. I also wrote Prom Moment which ended up winning a competition about a girl with learning difficulties going to her leavers prom and discovering love for the first time.

Writing has helped me a lot, I mean, I wouldn't be writing The A Side if I felt unable to talk about my anxiety and past experiences with it good and bad. 

With You and Me becoming successful not overnight but when it did start to gain a following and readers recommending it to others, I found friends and not having issues speaking to them online. Taking to someone online is the total opposite of talking to someone face to face. In person, you need to look at them and speak up but online, you can chat whenever and I prefer that much more.

Let me know when writing has been your guardian angel throughout your life, if writing is your main voice just like mine is.