I always thought I could write.

I mean, I did write.

I produced acres of copy for work – I could make an industrial site in Wolverhampton sound like hot shit. Sometimes, I updated this (or another) blog. During the Great Underemployment of 2018–2019, I even wrote a truly wild erotic short story. I published it on Amazon under a pseudonym and still make 39 pence occasionally from it.

But, otherwise, I just couldn’t sit down at the keyboard and meaningfully get the daydreams out.

In the summer of 2022, prolonged exposure therapy finally unstuck me. This therapy involves writing down everything you remember from a traumatic experience, focusing on what your feelings and senses were doing moment to moment. Then, you record yourself reading it aloud and listen to it for hours at a time. Usually, the traumatic experience is something brief, like a car accident. In my case, it was a 39-hour labor.

The therapy process – a bit like my experience of childbirth – was drawn out and torturous. But it worked. It turned down the volume on the intrusive thoughts and, as a byproduct, seems to have removed whatever bit of my ego was stopping me from writing.

In autumn 2022, I started writing a novel!

While working on the novel in 2023, I wrote short stories and threw myself at various opportunities. I participated in the SFWA mentorship scheme and was partnered with KC Grifant. Beyond that mentorship program, I was rejected from absolutely everything.

However, not all rejections were dead ends. In January 2024, one of those rejections led to joining a writers’ group. A year in, I still feel like the baby of the group, but reading others’ works-in-progress, receiving criticism alongside positive feedback, and hearing the experiences of writers at all stages of their careers have completely changed how I see myself.

I’m a writer now. Sorry.

This year has been an odd one. It’s been creatively successful. I’ve been quite prolific for a woman with a job, a child, and fluctuating health. I finished the novel! I drafted a novella! I’ve written a bunch of short stories, including a particularly silly one about a future Britain where all OAPs are given e-bikes!

But then again, the novella was rejected by a publisher in less than 24 hours. The bicycle hijinks story didn’t go anywhere in the competition I wrote it for. The few publications I’ve sent work to have ghosted me.

As of December 2024, I’ve put what was my complete novel into the creative woodchipper. What’s emerging is stranger, richer, more ambitious, and just a little exciting.

This year, I also received my first commissions for the inaugural issue of Lost Levenshulme. The zine has sold out three print runs and launched my pen name – Ella Sprakarn. (She’s got a Instagram, so you know it’s serious.)

Yeah, as I said, I’m a writer now. Sorry!

Pipstrello is about grief, guilt, bats, cats, the Fallowfield Loop, and the pet graveyard in Highfield Country Park. Sure, maybe I tried to fit too much into 1,500 words, but I’m still very proud of it. Thanks to Richard V Hirst for commissioning and editing the story. Recording it in the All FM studios with Jason was one of the highlights of my year. It was released on Spotify and broadcast on North Manchester FM on Halloween. Have a listen!

It would be dishonest not to mention that I am finishing the year feeling profoundly burned out. Writing gives me joy and an identity beyond motherhood and work, but I’ve not got the balance between my needs and responsibilities right. I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’ve (probably) lived with (still) undiagnosed ADHD for 39 years, and have learned some unhelpful coping strategies. I turn 40 in 2025, and while I have hope and ambition for my writer self, figuring out new ways to maintain equilibrium and create room for creativity remains an ongoing challenge.

Anyway, I’m a writer now. Suck it.