This is how writing happens for me

I put myself at my desk in Frenchie and remind myself I’m there because underneath everything else - fear, self-doubt, anxiety, inner critic - writing is joy. It is noticing. It is feeling. It is connecting. It is imagining. It’s being human, reduced to a sentence, word by word making the bones and flesh and skin of story. Stories are alive. They breathe and grow as we do. They nourish and guide us, blind and free us.

Sometimes, very rarely, writing is glamorous. I’ll shower and dress up for my desk. Wear favourite earrings or a talisman around my neck.

Other times, like today, it’s just however I turn up. As long as I do. (Frenchie, I need not say, is always glamorous.)

The main thing is unwavering in its sameness: turn up. I remind myself of this all the time.

Turn up for who you were when you didn’t know how to find courage to try but kept dreaming. Turn up for the stories and ideas that need you to bring them to life. Turn up because doing so answers every poem that’s ever given you goosebumps: what will you do with your one wild precious life? I’m turning up, Mary Oliver.

I remind myself: everything you want in your soul only has a chance of becoming if you turn up. Summon the conviction to get out of your own way and let your imagination lead you.

It’s not word counts or ticked off scenes.
It’s not page numbers or plot lines.
They come later.

Before anything else, writing is turning up. Because you want to. Because it brings you joy. Because it’s what you love. It’s the wonder of choosing to commit to something bigger than and beyond you.

How beautiful an act, to have faith in yourself as you make something from nothing.

Turn up.
Turn.
Up.
First one word, then another.
I remind myself.