An International Women’s Day talk.
I was delighted to be invited to speak on the subject the benefits of writing at an International Women’s Day event in Brightlingsea on March 8th 2024 – a successful day with multiple and varied speakers. This is a précis of my talk:
My reading in early adulthood at university mostly consisted of textbooks and scientific journals and my writing was simply that of medical notes ( with decent handwriting for a medical doctor!). I’m beginning with the subject of reading because it’s difficult to be a writer if one doesn’t read. Reading is wonderful in its own right and also teaches us about life, as well as allowing us to explore writing techniques. After relatively early retirement from GP practice, I found it great to have more time to expand the range of my reading.
Before I left the surgery, patients would ask me what I’d do with myself in retirement and I would reply I’d enjoy spending more time in my own house and garden, and of course reading. Somehow, and almost out of nowhere, I then found myself saying, ‘I might start writing’. I think they were terrified I’d use their identities, habits and health issues in my writing. On the whole I’ve avoided that, but I often slip in a little bit of illness in for my characters.
I signed up for a ‘Start Writing Fiction’ module with the Open University and loved it. The course gave me confidence to join two local writing groups, mostly made up of women writers. Over 10 years later, I am still an active member of these groups with the original team of women and just two male writers joining us. Now that has been a benefit of writing – a group of friends, prompting and sharing ideas, helping each other with writing challenges and also being there in times of personal difficulties. As well as friendship I find the groups keep me grounded and discipline me to write regularly. Writing is a good focus – a distraction in difficult times, and a joy on more positive days. Despite all the good things, writing can also be demanding and frustrating; I’ll come on to the ‘Ups and Downs of writing’ later.
Many of you might already be writers, perhaps keeping diaries and journals, or maybe writing letters to friends. Others might be quietly playing around with short stories or poems. (I find train journeys with a notebook in hand can be a good place to write poetry – perhaps it’s the rhythm of the train). The brave ones of you might be thinking of writing memoirs or a novel. Whatever your aim, I say keep at it and remember the old adage, ‘keep exercising your writing muscles’.
I looked up some statistics for my talk and found that in the UK, 72,000 people identify as authors , writers and translators and 48,000 of those are female. According to a recent study from the Office for National Statistics, it shows 60% of writers are women. The best-selling author of all time is a woman – Agatha Christie. I also discovered that men still read more male author’s books than books written by women. There wasn’t much mentioned on these sites about non-published writers, who I guess are hard to pin down, but I imagine much writing is done simply for personal satisfaction, behind close doors.
To summarise my benefits of writing:
I) A feeling of satisfaction when a piece comes together nicely, even if no one ever reads it.
2)A sense of achievement when a piece, however small, is appreciated by friends or are published in any way ( eg. magazines or websites of which there are many).
3) The thrill of a book launch, and the joy of being able call yourself an author.
4) Last but not least., writing is something great to do on a quiet, lonely day when it’s raining outside.
Let’s look at the possible downsides:
1)There’s never enough time – writing swallows up time ridiculously easily
2) Frustration when you run out of ideas or get writers block
3) The flat feeling of members of your writing group don’t get what you’re trying to convey
4) Your family never getting round to reading your work, not even your latest novel
5) Dark clouds appearing overhead with every rejection from an agent or a publisher, or even a competition in a local newspaper
6) Absolutely deep and lasting depression when a professional editor picks terrible holes in the manuscript of your treasured novel – you need tough skin, and must be prepared to adapt and rework your manuscript until it’s right.
One last positive to end now:- writing gives you a chance to talk books with lovely interested people. I did mention other things, like NaNoWriMo, and the journey to publishing a novel. I also mentioned my four published novels in my talk in Brightlingsea, but did not have space to repeat all that here. Information about my four novels remains visible elsewhere on my website. Thanks for reading, or listening, Philippa .
philippahawleywriter 