The first thing you should know about freelancing is that you spend a lot of time aboard trains. Here I am now, Coach C of the Cross Country service home with my laptop tilted forward and a just-finished book acting (poorly) as a mouse mat. As we’ve three stops left to go, now seems like the perfect time to introduce you to my blog.

This will be my first time blogging. I’m not entirely sure what to expect from the experience, but I do hope you find my posts readable if nothing else. Every writer knows how difficult it can be to call a draft ‘finished’, and I’m hoping that blogging will help me let go of that perfectionism a little. It occurs to me that typing out words for unseen readers (that’s you in this scenario) is a good practice for writers – just as reserving an aisle seat is a good practice for humans over six feet tall.

So why start blogging now? I’ll start with the selfish reasons. For one thing, I’ve just launched my own website, and it seems only fitting to accompany this surge in online presence with some proper twenty-first-century writing; after all, exposure is important to creatives. Another reason is to give me a space to record all those thoughts and ideas that don’t always make it onto paper, either because they end up lost, or simply because they don’t have a suitable home. 

As for specific types of content, the best I can do at this stage is speculate. One thing I can say for certain is that I’ll be posting news and updates on my creative writing. Whenever my work is published, or whenever I begin working on something new and exciting, this will be the first place I’ll share it.

But what’s in it for you, the reader? I’ve picked up some useful writing advice from blogs over the years, and that’s something I’d like to pay forward. The writing process isn’t as simple as readers often assume, and we could all benefit from learning a little about others’ techniques. Freelancing can also be tricky at times, and that’s something else I’m keen to explore on the blog.

If you know me, you’ll know that I enjoy writing short stories. I also write flash fiction. If you’ve not heard of the term, its other monikers are ‘sudden fiction’ and ‘micro-fiction’ with several ridiculous sounding sub-genres such as dribble and drabble. The kind I’m interested in is the younger sibling of short fiction, stories of less than 1,000 words that hint at something bigger than themselves. In other words: a little short for the writing page of my website, but the perfect length for a blog post.

I’ve a few other ideas for content, but we’ve two stops left now, and that means we’ll soon be approaching the 4G blind-spot that lurks out there in the fens. Thanks for reading my introduction, and welcome to the blog! I’ve decided to keep updates simple for now. Instead of subscribing to the blog, all you have to do is follow me on Twitter to keep up with each new post I publish.