Call yourself a writer?

I have an uneasy relationship with the word ‘writer’.

In most ways, I suppose I am one.  Writing is what I do.  It is what I spend my time doing.  Writers write.  Sometimes people even read – and occasionally pay me for – the things I write.

Writing into parenthood…

By Amy Bird

Every parent knows that parenthood is a journey. I hope soon to make that journey; as I write this, I am five months pregnant. The characters in my new novel Hide and Seek also have to make that journey. It is not a roman à clef; I didn’t know when I conceived the idea for the book that I was pregnant. But as I wrote, exploring my characters’ approaches to fatherhood and motherhood, I became conscious that I would (all being well) soon be a mother. I thought about that role – what I would want to be, what I would not want to be, and how to achieve that.

What would you do if you were me?

By Laura Morgan

The writer in me is restless, itchy, in that under-the-skin bassline pulse that has me wildly dancing between nostalgia and a way off in the distance wondering. Change looms somewhere, I can hear her call, that echoing voice singing to me like a siren, especially in the middle of the night, and the early break of dawn. She wants me to run, skip, fall off the side of the cliff; she wants me to stop hiding in the safety of a job I despise and be something real.