MY WRITING UNTIL NOW
I’ve been writing since I was very young, in all different genres and formats. I still have hundreds of notebooks hiding under my bed filled with stories and poems, not to mention the countless files on my computer of play ideas or the first chapter of my next great novel. Most of this stuff is unfinished, and most of it nobody else has ever read. This is something I want to focus on over the next year – learning to enjoy sharing my work with others. All writing is a form of communication after all, and right now I’m only communicating with the underside of my mattress.
A few of the many, many notebooks
The only writing of mine that ever really gets to see the light of day is my academic writing for school and now uni. This is great of course; writing essays is an invaluable skill, but I haven’t really taken time to write creatively for years, since writing for assignments has overtaken my life. While there is a certain joy in writing academically – finding the perfect way to bring in the quote from that journal article, getting the exact right wording in your introduction – it’s not particularly creatively fulfilling. I am thrilled to be working with BunBanter over the next year and giving myself the chance to have this creative output. People talk about self-care in terms of bubble baths and scented candles a lot, but I think creativity and learning new things can also be invaluable to self-improvement and fulfilment.
When I was younger, I was inspired by books like C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series, or Little Women by Louisa May Alcott – classics passed on to me from my parents – as well as more contemporary books like the Ruby Redfort series by Lauren Child, which followed the antics of a teen spy. I think as I’ve grown up, I have evolved as a reader and a writer, so it isn’t all magical worlds and exciting chases. What most interests me at the moment are the specific interpersonal dramas that I’ve read from writers like Arthur Miller and in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. When I am writing my own plays, I would like to write like this, where the drama comes from the tensions and conflict of particular character relationships, of people just like you or me.
Baby Liv, reading with Dad, 2009.
I have been involved in theatre in different roles for many years. This has included roles in plays and LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) acting exams. I think acting can be a vulnerable experience, like all forms of creativity. You’re essentially putting little bits of yourself on a plate for other people’s entertainment. There’s something specifically and uniquely vulnerable about writing. Maybe it’s something about your words, your ideas… You’re not interpreting someone else, it’s all you, on paper for others to read, and in the case of plays, interpret and perform. So, needless to say, I’m nervous, but I am excited too! I think it will be good for me to take risks. Over the past year, I have left school, started Uni, learnt to live by myself, all in the midst of a global pandemic… Stepping out of my comfort zone in terms of writing should be fine, right?
Livia Nicholson
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