The darkest secrets of an outdoor writer

The pull of the outdoors is tough for any writer

First, an admission... this isn't my first blog post. I've been blogging (mostly) about hiking and (occasionally) about running for a few years now at thewalkerswife.blogspot.co.uk

I've thoroughly enjoyed sharing my outdoor - and frequently very exhausting - experiences with readers around the world; in fact, I'm currently writing a travelogue called O Fôn i Fynwy about my long backpacking expedition through Wales this summer.

But enough about hiking for now because it's time to reveal my guilty secret.

While I genuinely love throwing a rucksack onto my back or fastening a running belt around my waist, I'm also a closet fiction writer... someone who sits at her desk making things up.

I wish I could now disclose that behind the Walker's Wife persona is a best-selling novelist (in my dreams) but I'm afraid the reality is rather less exciting.

I've been dabbling with writing in its many forms for years on and off; however if I'm truthful my commitment to my art has often been rather suspect.

Around 1990-91, I had limited success with Loving magazine; it was around that time that the publication stopped employing the artifice that its 'true life' stories were written by teenagers and young women and started publishing the author's name. I can still recall the thrill of seeing those first issues containing my stories on the newsagents' shelves. The pay wasn't bad either - between £50 and £90 per story, which seemed a fortune back then.

Loving was a great publication for aspiring writers because the editor took time (and cared enough) to provide detailed feedback on stories that were half-decent so at least you'd know where you went wrong. My first submission was rejected on the grounds that the characters were 'too middle-class'.  This seemed a bizarre accusation. I grew up in a two-up, two-down terraced house in a traditional working class area and was married to a steelworker. Middle-class I most definitely was not!

Of course, I hadn't followed the very sensible advice to 'write about what you know' and instead was struggling to write about what I definitely didn't know. If Loving's editor had been looking for tales of wealthy young socialites with names 'stolen' from Jilly Cooper novels she'd have found plenty wrong with my humble offerings. Fortunately, she wasn't and before long I was getting stories with titles like Forced to be Friends, Late Baby and Kisses for Cash accepted regularly.

My next big writing adventure was enrolling on a Creative Arts degree at the University of Glamorgan. I was 32 with two children and my haphazard family planning saw me giving birth to my third child just ten days before the start of my final year (I wouldn't be without my gorgeous youngest daughter now of course). Fortunately, my lecturers were brilliant, allowing me to take my baby to class with me (though one did request I refrain from breastfeeding in there... as if!). I graduated with a First, having spent three wonderful years indulging my passion for reading and writing.

During the final summer holiday I even managed to write my one and only Mills and Boon. Stormy Lady was never published but the feedback was encouraging, with the reader adding that my level of research was impressive (almost the entire story was set on a yacht sailing from the Canary Islands to the UK). A second Mills and Boon - this time about a vet and set in Wales - was enthusiastically plotted and the first chapters written but then I made that fateful mistake of many would-be authors... I decided to pursue a 'proper' career. As a local newspaper reporter, and later working in public relations, writing became what I did in the day job and not a pleasure activity. Like many women juggling careers and family life, my creative writing was put on the back-boiler.

Occasionally I'd grab time on a Sunday afternoon or the odd evening, and somehow I managed to complete two full-length scripts (one drama, one comedy) which I submitted to the BBC Writers Room as well as several short scripts. Little glimmers of encouragement over the years - a half-decent Reader's Report from the BBC, a short-listing in a competition - kept me bashing out the script ideas (but rarely finishing them).

I had a memoir piece accepted for an anthology Foresight with Hindsight (and was thrilled when I realised my former journalist lecturer Professor Meic Stephens had a piece included in the same book). I also had a story accepted in Take a Break (just the one, several others came winging their way back).

Fast forward over two decades from the Loving days and my family is now grown (the surprise baby recently packed off to university). Was it madness to rekindle my creative writing ambitions? Maybe I should just stick to the factual writing - the outdoor blog, ebooks and apps, travel writing?

And then, a chance opportunity arose to have a short ghost story published in an anthology Hocus Pocus '14 (and thank you to the wonderful editor, author and QVC presenter Debbie Flint, for putting her faith in me, a complete unknown). 

My story Insubstantial Evidence is set in a charity shop where a regular visitor causes a stir with his latest donation. 

Re-editing this story (and changing the ending) has reminded me how much pleasure I've always derived from writing fiction as well as how many unfinished projects I have scattered around my shelves and on various memory sticks. There are several short scripts, at least two feature length scripts (more if you include the ones that are still at the ideas and copious notes stage) and a novel, fully plotted then abandoned somewhere in chapter three. Not to mention that second Mills & Boon, of course. 

So I've made a decision.

In between the factual writing about hiking and running - and formatting the hiking ebooks we write for our digital publishing business camau - I'm determined to find time to get creative again. I'm not promising the earth but over this winter I plan to find time to revisit some of those old projects and decide if they're worth resurrecting. 

In the mean time, I'm really looking forward to meeting and chatting with other writers here online. 

Thanks for reading.

Tracy