Reading has been a big part of my life since I was little. Having read the works of Roald Dahl, Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo, Spike Milligan among many others, I loved immersing myself into the fantastical worlds that these authors created. It was exciting and playful, dark and scary, all at once. And it still is all those things even now, except for all the boring parts of course.

But still, reading planted a seed in my mind that continued to grow as I got older. I started reading more mature works by the likes of Stephen King and Ken Follett, and my imagination kept expanding even more. Meanwhile, me, my mum and my siblings, we still share and recommend books to each other, even obscure titles that none of us have even heard of before!

And that’s why I recently decided that I wanted to become a writer myself, so that I could tell my own stories, some of which have been brewing away in my mind for months, even years. 

And when I started to write a blog post about my trip to Peru from 2023 and realised that I had enough material to write a full-length book, it felt like the right project had fallen straight into my lap.

And so here I am, sharing my writing journey with you all and hoping that it inspires others to write and tell their own stories. After all, we are storytelling beings at heart. We truly thrive the most when we gather round the dinner table in the evening and share stories about what we did today.

Because stories help us feel more connected to each other. They help us understand the world and why it is the way it is. They can help us put to words things that we often struggle to articulate. They can help us understand what we truly value and treasure, learn important lessons and find solutions to problems that we are facing right now. 

But more importantly, stories help us to better understand ourselves and our own inner world. If it is full of turmoil, stories can help us find a way to resolve this turmoil. If it is full of warmth, then stories can help us to cultivate that warmth.

In this way, telling stories can be surprisingly therapeutic, helping us to deal with grievances like loss, heartbreak, anger and injustice, and in turn it can help us to heal from these grievances and grow stronger mentally and spiritually. 

So if you’re an aspiring writer or you’ve never thought about writing, I’d say give it a go! Even if you think or feel that you have nothing to say, trust me when I say that you likely have more than you realise. It just takes the right tools and the right resources and you’ll be crafting and telling your own stories in no time. 

I’m still at a beginner level myself, but I’ve done my research and I’ve found the tools that I need to get myself started. It’s a small start, but we’ve all got to start somewhere.

So what are you waiting for? It’s time to get cracking!

P.S. Just in case anyone is feeling down today, here’s a picture I took of a llama from Peru (or it could be an alpaca - I can’t tell the difference between the two).