Literary Sanctuary

What exactly am I doing up here? This is where I think, where nobody can find me, where I'm not distracted or disturbed. I call this place my literary sanctuary, an exclusive, private paradise where I can just let myself go and be inspired. This is the closest I get to nature, to the elements and I've escaped here, to this exile whenever I've needed to think about stories or poems. I've been a writer for the best part of forty years and on many occasions I've had to return to recharge my batteries and absorb the breath-taking view.

I believe writers are born, not made and I felt the calling at the tender age of thirteen when I used to hide in my bedroom and pretend I was asleep. Dad would come home drunk or in a bad mood and while mum would bear the brunt of his temper I would lie under the bed, pencil in hand, jotting things down.

By fourteen I'd filled up an entire notebook.

By sixteen I was selling stories to the local kids to read; most were legends, tales to tell around the camp fire.

At eighteen adulthood was upon me and I was forced to abandon what some called dreamy nonsense for a living wage. But unbeknown to my teachers, parents, employers and even my wife, I never completely gave up my literary aspirations; on the contrary, I found I needed my craft more and more as I grew older.

My twenties and thirties were taken up with jobs I rarely liked, marriage and raising a family, but I wasn't totally smothered in the daily grind they call life; I had in the background a light, a hope, something else out there that was mine. And it was that something else which kept me going.

Literary Sanctuary

Now in my fifties with grown up kids and a pension dwindling, I have more time to spend here, more opportunities to gather my thoughts and unwind. Most people would recommend a Babylon, a haven they disappear to every now and then for a break; I'm sorry, I can't do that because I simply don't wish to share this with anybody. You see, what I have here, what I see in front of me, it's mine and nobody is going to take that away.