More than writer's block......It's a tower!!

 Confidence.

I am sure it is something many writers lack at some point or another.

In my case, it has always been a rollercoaster! When I first decided to consider publishing my first children's book, I hadn't really put pen to paper since being a teenager (aside from a brief moment blogging my parenting and childcare experiences)

I first started writing poetry, entering competitions ( I won a jar of jellybeans once!) and feeling on top of the world when I had a piece shortlisted in the "National Poetry Competition" which ended up with my work published in their anthology that year.

Young and naïve, I thought my poems were the bees knees! I was encouraged by family and teachers at school and even penned my own book "Thoughts of a teenage poet". I have no idea where that manuscript is now, I probably threw it out in a teenage strop! Will have to search the lost!

But life moved on and so did my priorities. I started working in Early Years and along with that, an interest in children's literature emerged. I started buying children's books to read to the children and discovered how repetition and flowing prose helped gauge their attention.

I took my foundation degree and had my own child and started reading again, both to my new born daughter and adult fiction to entertain myself. I self- published my first book "Mrs Handbag and the magic seed" based on my Early Years adventures and many others followed, using the Amazon publishing platform to make my dreams a reality. Along with the assistance of some talented illustrators (and my own daughter!) I started to feel like I could make a difference.

But, as ever, life got in the way.

There have been glimpses of opportunities (I will tell those another time!) but they never came to fruition. I do not have the funds to pay illustrators for their time and efforts and neither do I have the time to edit the books myself with working full time. 

This summer has been crunch time! End the writing dream or look for new writing opportunities to get my creative flow going?

And so, this blog was born. A place where I can write freely about my writing journey, my attempts at writing, my love for reading and my aims to encourage others to have a passion for books, reading and writing through my work with children and outside of work too!

Welcome to the Ardent Scribbler!