(A) Why I write

Why I write.

I used to hate writing.

When I was a child in Northern Ireland I hated writing at school. It was hard work. Damning me with faint praise, at fourteen, my English teacher wrote on my end of year report:

"He makes up with enthusiasm for what he lacks in ability in this subject."

For the past eighteen years I have been an English teacher!

Back in the sixties I remember Dad telling me we needed science teachers to fight the Russians. So, I did science at school and eventually became a science teacher.

I first started writing when I went to Bristol University to do my teacher training in 1975. I was so lonely that I wrote furiously out of boredom, frustration and anger-about a fictional character called "Macmillan" (myself) who found it difficult to relate to anyone at all.

I remember the typist saying to me kindly:

"You have a very Irish style."

I think she was referring to the four-letter words splattered across the pages. I could hardly look at her with the embarrassment. She thought I knew something about writing! I was vain and so flattered. My fragile ego had been stroked for the first time.

I was addicted. I wrote some more and then lost it all somewhere. I lost patience with myself and gave it up: a familiar theme in my life.

Maybe my old teacher was correct: I didn't write again for twenty seven years.That was in 1975.

I stopped writing and didn't start again until about 2002.

Now, I'm addicted again. The motivation is similar-frustration with the loneliness of life as an outsider. But, I like writing now as an end in itself. I need it like a drug. It is the almost the only form of meaningful communication left to me.

I've tried sending what I've written to friends. Some like it-but others I know only read out of politeness. I don't want to foist my writing on them. So, I've decided to blog.

I'm vain enough to need an audience but I don't want to bother or lose my friends unnecessarily.I've no idea how to start a blog -another very familiar theme in my life!

I'll maybe start with an overview of my life in the next blog. Any assistance from readers would be greatly appreciated.