Mother-writer mixture living on the UK South East coast. I use words and sea shells as currency.
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. From the age we’re taught to read and write, to use letters and punctuation and eventually grammar to communicate, we want to tell our story. Some of us end up using more visual means to share who we are and what we have to say. Some of us use sounds and rhythm to convey our truths. I have explored a little of all of it, but I always come back to words.
Poetry. Fiction. Essays. Memoirs. Journalism. Children’s stories. Give me all of it. Let me write it all.
When I was 24, after having studied Writing and Journalism at university and still working in the library’s archive at that same university, I emailed Lois Lowry, author of the beloved young adult novel, The Giver, for advice. She kindly wrote back to me: “I think young people like you who love to write are probably doing all the right things that will help you become a professional writer. The hardest thing is waiting…because writers need to experience a lot, to live life, before they are able to write with maturity and experience. So write, read, study, probably major in literature in college. Travel, observe, learn about all sorts of people, and experience life.”
I took her suggestions. I lived. I worked jobs I didn’t care about and some I did. I met people. I took my hitched-at-21 marriage to the British guy I met online when I was 16 as serious as any 30-year-old who’d met their partner through their seasoned career or network of mutually successful friends. I took spontaneous 14-hour drive weekend trips with him. I went to some business workshops and conferences trying to learn about money. I worked with teenagers. We traveled some in Europe. We moved across country to California to attend a school of the supernatural and spent two years with people from all over the globe diving in to the mystical. I started writing professionally. I had a baby. I had a poem published. I moved to Europe, first Germany then finally on to the U.K. I became enamoured with the seaside and found perhaps my truest self to date. I had another baby. I continued writing professionally, though at a much slower pace. I had a miscarriage. I stopped writing. I became pregnant again and started planning what I do now as well as writing creatively just for myself.
So here we are. I write and help you write. I am passionate about the inner voice and people writing their stories, because each one is important and necessary, and there are too many lost words not being owned or shared. Let’s find them.
Christie Drozdowski 