Melissa Lawrence

Hi everyone. It's National Poetry Day in the UK today and the theme this year is Truth. There are lots of poetry-related activities going on around the country and if you want to find out more, have a look at this link: https://poetrysociety.org.uk/projects/national-poetry-day/ I must admit that I haven't been writing (or reading) much poetry lately but I recently got back in touch with a friend who is a very talented poet and after encouraging her to write a poem for National Poetry Day, I thought I should practise what I preach, especially as I always prefer writing when there is a theme and a deadline to work to. I was rather shocked to discover from my notebook that it is almost two years since I last wrote a poem and I must admit, I'd forgotten how hard it is. After writing down lots of ideas (the easy bit!), then deciding that none of them were any good and tearing up the piece of paper, I was watching a TV programme about the rock star Suzi Quatro when a co...

Hi everyone. Do you think of your writing as a hobby or a job? This is a question I have wrestled with a lot over the course of my writing life, although probably if I’d spent less time pondering which category to fit writing into and more time actually doing it, I might not need to be posing the question in the first place. It’s taken me quite a long time to realise this, but I do seem to be someone who functions better when I have “compartments” for different areas of my life and I have recently “re-compartmentalised” (if there is such a word) my writing back into being a hobby again which is where it first started. I need to compartmentalise my life There were three reasons for this. First of all, I turned 60 last January and had a great desire to “retire” from something. Although I officially retired from teaching and received a small occupational pension on the day before my 60th birthday, I actually stopped teaching about thirty years ago, so that didn’t really se...