My writing journey, by Paul Nield
So, I am invited by David Herring to write a blog, which is a first for me. But then, 2025 seems to be shaping up as a year of creative firsts.
My first entry to a creative writing competition, the Bournemouth Writing Prize, won me the prize for poetry. I read it, to live musical accompaniment, at the Bourne Jammy event at the Bournemouth Writing Festival, my first open mic performance. Later this year, I shall be part of the cast of The Winter’s Tale, to be performed by Brownsea Open Air Theatre in the grounds of Canford School. That will be the first time in over forty years that I have acted on stage. There must be something in the Bournemouth water!
Or rather, there is something creative in me that is trying to get out.
Last year I attended an evening class at the Arts University Bournemouth, 10 weeks of an introduction to creative writing. I thought that it would help me explore the notion that I might be able to write…something. Short stories, I imagined, since such inspiration as I had seemed to come from dreams, or moods, with no over-arching plot or storyline.
When I discovered that some of my fellow students had first drafts of whole novels tucked, as it were, under their arms, I began to wonder if I had come to the right place. But as the course progressed, and as we students shared pieces of work and gave each other feedback, my confidence grew. My winning poem began here, as an exercise in metaphor.
I have continued to write poetry for my own pleasure, and attended the follow-up creative writing course at AUB this spring. Now it has finished, some of us are continuing to meet up to share work and encouragement.
My creative process (if that’s the word for something so haphazard) begins sometimes with a dream, or day-dream, or sometimes with a word or phrase that sticks in the mind and says ‘Begin with me’ or ‘End with me’. The rest is wild imagination, and that, I am afraid, is not available on tap. But, sometimes, it seems to come from where the heart is, in ways unexpected, and reveals a poem.
What I cannot do is write to order, which makes the little flyers for writing competitions, collected at the Bournemouth Writing Festival and now sitting on my desk, something of an admonition. Writing this blog (is it long enough yet – a bloglet?) reminds me that the harder something is for me to write, the less it works as a piece of writing. A train of thought becomes a brain-noodle that’s stuck on the wok.
If there is a knack to knowing when a piece of work is finished, I need to work on it. In my case, it is the poet who is, sooner or later, finished, while the poem is not, but remains ‘as found’, perhaps to be picked up later, perhaps not.
When I have written more, it may become apparent that I have a voice or theme, but at present I am not sure what these may be. Finding out will be part of the fun, I hope.
I must end with my acknowledgement and gratitude to those without whom I would not be travelling this journey: Charlotte Fodor and Alice Flynn, the course leaders at AUB, my fellow students there, Dominic Wong of the Bournemouth Writing Festival, and, of course, David and Gena. Thank you all.