Gathering Stones - by Gloria Guest

My first venture into the writers world was at the ripe age of seven when I wrote my father a poem for father’s day. I recall it going something like,

Kisses, love and hugs

Two for you and two for me

And are lovely things to see

Complete with artistic drawing of course.

I took a bigger leap in grade three with a free verse poem called My Mother the House Wife. This one extoled my mother as a ‘pleasant young lady who always had a smile on her face.’

Obviously with talent like that, anything to do with creative writing continued to be my spot to shine in school ;) I do recall getting A’s and positive comments on stories that I turned in. However it was a grade 12 teacher who hounded me relentlessly until I agreed to enter an essay I ‘d written into a National Writing Contest that gave me my first real inclination that I was indeed a writer. I actually owe a lot to Mrs. Coy since it was with the money I won from that contest that I later attended college where I met my future husband. It does go to show how much we can affect one another’s lives with our encouragement (and relentless hounding!).

Sadly, I didn’t have the inner confidence to pursue my writing any further. I did take a couple of online writing courses and did well but I never carried through with submitting any pieces for publication.

It wasn’t until I started work as a reporter that my desire to write was actually ignited. Here I learned to step out of my comfort zone and write for deadlines.  Here I learned to love seeing my words in print. I eventually branched out into writing weekly columns for two different papers which gave me more confidence in my ability to share my inner thoughts with others.

I believe all of the above experiences are stones of remembrance along my rather rocky and winding path of writing. At times I have felt very lost in the writing world. It can be lonely and for me there has been a real battle with dealing with rejection, which is probably why I have not put my writing out there in the publishing world. But still I want to write.

Presently I blog at gloriaguest@wordpress.com and here on Inscribe. I have definitely found my involvement with Inscribe to be an important part of my journey as a writer.  I am also slowly but surely working on a memoir and have recently started taking a Creative Writing class through the University of Toronto.

 I still have no idea if I will ever see any of my writing in print but I all I can do is take it one step at a time, gathering stones of remembrance along the way and hopefully one day….