Addicted to Writing

WordPlay member, Gerry Wright, has recently seen his first novel, Farrel’s Last Case, published (under his pen name of Gerald R Wright). A couple of years ago he was struggling to keep the momentum going. Here he explains what changed things for him, and gives a little advice to all would-be-writers.

A warning to writers

Here is a Health Warning – writing can become addictive. Especially if you join a go-ahead writing group.

Three years ago, I had done very little writing; two short western stories for an on-line magazine in the USA, and an article in ‘Under the Queen’s Colours’, by Penny Legg, published by The History Press, about some of my experiences during my National Service days in Cyprus during the Emergency. That was until I joined WordPlay Writers’ Forum. Since then, things have changed dramatically.

A challenge for writers

I was challenged and encouraged to write, and that is what I did. Within a couple of months, I had written a short story, which appeared in the Forum’s first anthology. Then, after some workshops on writing, another short story followed, this time in an anthology entitled Shorts for Autumn, which incidentally won the UK Writing Magazine’s ‘Anthology of the Year Award, 2012’. This is on sale in a variety of English bookshops along the Costa. Since then, we have produced another anthology entitled Winter Gems which is due out later this year (in the winter, of course!), followed by A Lifetime of Childhood, and Precinct 22, which again will be available locally as well as Worldwide. There is, of course, a spring issue currently in preparation for 2014. That is not the end of the story for me.

Novel writing detected

With encouragement and advice, I have written a detective novel, Farrel’s Last Case, which has now been published. The thing now, is to sit down and write a sequel, in addition to finishing a fantasy novella and further short stories for future anthologies, as well as submitting another western short story to the States. See what I mean about writing becoming an addiction?

Writing: the healthy addiction

The thing is that this addiction is in no way injurious to your health, except maybe shortening the fingers as you bash the keyboard and, as you get older, you may need to get your eyes checked out. This experience is not peculiar to me however, I would think that seventy-five per cent of our members are now published authors. If anyone is really serious about writing, whether it be for pleasure, to leave something behind for your family, or penning that novel that you are sure you have lurking somewhere in the back of your mind, then get attached to a friendly writing group – may I suggest WordPlay Writers Forum, you will not go far wrong!

If you fancy joining in the WordPlay fun, then why not enter your email address on the left and we’ll keep you informed of what we’re doing?