How did you get started in writing? (Prompt courtesy of: Just Rojie)
I like this prompt and I’d love to see everyone answer it.
Like (probably) most people on WP, I always enjoyed writing, right from when I was a kid. My Dad always said I had a way with words. When my Grampa died I wrote a tribute to him, read it at his funeral and my parents had it put in our local newspaper. When my Mom retired from a career of nursing, I wrote a poem about her and my Dad made me put it in the paper.
I had diaries and journals throughout my teen years and even took notes and recorded my version of the events on family vacations. I had plans of becoming a reporter/journalist and the ultimate dream of being the six o’clock news anchor in Winnipeg.
I’ve told this story six thousand times about how, in high school, my best friend’s mom told me that becoming a journalist was a terrible idea and unfortunately I let it die right there in the backseat of her car. And so I became a nurse.
Pretty much completely stopped writing.
Fast forward twenty-five years and I’m telling this story to a co-worker when I worked in homecare and she says well why not pursue it now, what’s stopping you? I said well there’s no way now, I’m going to pick up and move my family, or leave them behind, to move to Winnipeg to take broadcast journalism. Plus the face I had for tv once, is now a face for radio.
But I let her words sink in. I googled ‘online writing courses’. I enrolled in a mickey mouse course. But it was the catalyst. It gave me the courage to start writing people’s stories. I threw caution to the wind and contacted our local newspaper and the editor actually published them. One after the other.
Then I told him that if he ever needed help covering stories for the paper, I was available. Sure enough, he gave me assignment after assignment. I was thrilled, elated even. It was an amazing opportunity for an amateur like me.
Eventually the paper shut it’s doors though. That’s when I googled “how to start a blog”, after some encouragement from my Mom, and here I am. Voila.
bloom.planted.north 
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