In primary school, my best friend and I became book monitors. This meant we had to tidy up the class library, make sure other students returned books in a timely manner, and promote reading among our peers. I’ve never done anything by halves, so I decided to reorganise and revamp the whole reading area, complete with decorations and book reviews on the walls. As a result, more books were logged out of the library than ever before; the whole class was finally excited about reading.

So, it’s safe to say that I’ve always been a bookworm. On family holidays I chose to read using the lights of other cars rather than sleeping on overnight journeys. I was regularly found by my parents up at 2 am for “just one more page”. All my local librarians knew me by name. I was there every Sunday to check out my 5 reads for the week. My love of writing started, like many, with a love of reading.

My obsession with books transformed itself into an obsession with writing when I started to write short stories as a kid. Sometimes they were for homework assignments, but more often than not I wrote because I loved it. I remember annoying everyone I knew with my “books”, aka passing the 3-page epic I’d just written around the dinner table.

However, for a little while, I fell out of love with both writing and reading. As a young teenager, I somehow got caught up in the idea that writing was “uncool” or “nerdy”. I only really wrote for English assignments and read a lot less than I ever used to. From time to time I started playing around with writing fanfiction. However, I never properly fell in love with it like everyone else in the online community.

Earlier this year I decided I needed a new hobby. I was going through a breakup and struggling quite a lot with my mental health – I wanted a distraction from life. One of my friends said I should try writing. She writes a lot of fanfiction and told me to just create some characters and see what I could come up with. Even if it was completely rubbish I didn’t have to share it with anyone if I didn’t want to. In the end, that story never saw the light of day, and I also wouldn’t necessarily say it was good. But it helped. Whatever issues I had during the day I could escape to my characters in the evening, create new worlds and new lives that were much easier to understand and process.

Obviously now I’m a blogger. Once I was in a more stable headspace I realised that fiction wasn’t really for me. I’m bad at seeing the bigger picture and planning out my writing, I just want to sit down and ramble away on a page. This works fine for short little blog posts, not so well for 300-page novels. I started my blog in June 2018 and I’ve loved every second of writing for it ever since. I get to write about all my favourite things in life, from music to travel and everything in between. It’s also extremely rewarding to see that my posts have helped people or brightened up their day (shout out to my friend who told me she cried when she read my coming out post, honestly one of the most beautiful responses to anything I’ve ever written).

What I’m trying to say is that writing is overwhelmingly personal. Throughout my life, I’ve written in different ways for different reasons, but it’s always ultimately been for me. Even now when I’m writing for the people who read my blog, I do it for me and only me. The readers are just an added bonus, a confidence booster let’s say. I fell in love with writing as a child not because I thought that when I was 19 I would be writing online about my experiences at university or my latest trip to Europe, but because I enjoyed it. And that’s why I continue to write now; because I enjoy it.

About the blogger

Name: Megan Hogg

From: Cumbria, United Kingdom

Blogs at: pixieskiesblog.wordpress.com

Follow her on Twitter: @pixieskies_ 

Get in touch: [email protected]