I'm a writer.

07/02/11

I can't believe that almost eleven months have passed since my last Lifelines blog posting. It's been a hectic year but with the move to Dib Bahir now complete, I'm looking forward to settling down to my writing.

Although work on the Lifelines course material ground to a halt during the thick of the move, I have always managed to keep inching forward in some form or other.

I spent July and August 2010 in Britain, visiting family members, some of whom I hadn't seen for decades, and returning to former homes, including the house where I was born. These travels provided rich material for my autobiography. I made notes at the time, but I need to write these up. Unfortunately, I did not have time to go through the family photograph collection in my parents' loft, so this remains to be done.

I have continued to read other people's autobiographies. Most recently I enjoyed 'The Pattern in the Carpet' by the authoress Margaret Drabble.

Despite all the distractions, I must have made some progress with my writing last year as two short pieces I submitted to writing competitions at Leaf Books were commended and will be published later this year in an anthology of the winning and commended entries of the Leaf Books Nano-Fiction and Micro-Fiction 2010 competitions. I'll provide more details about how to order a copy of the anthology in a future blog. This is an important step forward for me as it will be the first time my writing is published. I can now honestly call myself a writer.

Many of my books are still in boxes as I am gradually unpacking. I recovered my Lifelines course ring binder last week, so I shall now pick up where I left off months ago.