Why I started writing full-time

I owned a dance and Pilates studio up until last year. Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a dance teacher so selling the business was one of the toughest things I have ever done in my life. I was then left with the ability to do anything I wanted to do. Doesn’t that sound great? It’s not. Being able to do anything is such a vast concept, such a big scary concept. It’s actually too much. Deep down, though, I knew I wanted to write and so I’m going to tell you the story about why I started to write.

Once upon a time…

there was a blonde little girl who grew up in your average middle class family in sunny South Africa. This little girl was an only child and both her mother and father worked full-time. So she was left to entertain herself.

During school holidays, from a young age, this little girl would spend the holidays at her mom’s work surrounded by piles of paper and lots of pens. This is where her first love started. She was never really good at drawing and so, she decided she would tell stories.

Being an only child, this little girl was very good at using her imagination. She used it every day when playing with her Barbie dolls, creating imaginary friends (this is true, don’t laugh), or pretending she was a librarian/flight attendant/shop keeper. Because of the constant use of her imagination, she found story-telling to come naturally and easily to her.

So she started writing

One winter holiday, sitting in her mother’s office, she wrote her first newspaper with a bunch of made-up stories. The little girl then photocopied the handwritten and hand designed newspaper and distributed it by hand throughout the corridors of her mom’s office.

Her love for writing only grew from there

Year, after, year she would do the same thing. She then upgraded from paper and pen and started writing on a black & white screened computer, which was one of her father’s old computers. It was on this computer that she started writing poetry and her first ever ‘book’. The little blonde girl wrote about a plane crash in the Amazon Jungle. She was 8 years old at the time.

She loved to write but never finished a single book

By the time she was in highschool she still hadn’t stopped writing. Her stories were always disaster struck or adapted fairytales. She wrote adaptations of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and even wrote about a group of friends’ whose local hangout (a coffee shop and internet cafe) burnt down while they were in it.

As much as she loved creating these stories she never ended up finishing a single one.

This young blonde woman then applied to study Law and upon receiving her acceptance letter she broke down into tears with the sudden realisation that she wanted to write not argue. She then went to study English literature and Editing. This she finished.

All through her studies, she blogged. She blogged about shoes, and dance, and life in general (nothing ground breaking). But her dancing, a childhood hobby, remained a favourite topic and so she thought it to be a logical career path to follow.

So she opened a dance studio

Despite her love for writing, deep down she never quite understood the path to making it a career. So instead, she did what she knew. She opened a dance studio, which she loved and nurtured. She wrote about dance for years.

Almost 10 years later, she was married, had two children, and missed writing, about more than just dance and life through blogging, terribly.

She took a leap

She sold her business and started a journey of discovery where writing found her and she found herself to be content and happy.

She loved the clicking of the keyboard beneath her fingertips. She loved creating something that no one else ever had. She loved using mundane, everyday words, strung together to form creative sentences with beauty and meaning.

This is why I love to write.

This blonde little girl who loved to write that turned into the blonde woman who loved to write is me.

Though I was happy doing what I knew and enjoyed (dancing). I always felt as if it wasn’t enough. This is why I quit and started writing full-time. Writing has given me the freedom to spend more time with my family, to be able to work when and where I want to, and to do something I have loved doing every since I was a little girl. I don’t think that I ever realised how much writing was a part of me until I did some soul searching last year and finally found that this is what I am meant to be doing.

I need to write. Writing was meant for me. And every way I look, every question I ask to determine if writing is what I should be doing, every answer I receive is YES! Yes! YES! This is why I love to write.

This is my dream, even though, I never truly realised it. I have been doing it, naturally, my whole life. How can it not be meant to be?