Writing has been a big part of my life. I get the gene from my father,
seeing he was a prolific letter writer in his lifetime and in turn, he
got it from his mother, who was also a keen letter writer herself. As
for creative writing though, I don't think they wrote any poetry or
stories, but I'm sure the creative spark is from this side of the
family, seeing my aunt is a composer/musician.
I
have five or six lever arch folders filled with my song lyrics, poems
and various other creations. There's over a thousand lyrics and poems,
I should know, I've counted them. A fair chunk of them were written
whilst I was in high school, with my most prolific year being 1988 when
I was Newcastle university, coming to grips with being away from home
for the first time, and experiencing life in a place other than
Tamworth. After that, the frequency of compositions has been in a
steady decline, with the exception of a healthy spike in 2000 when I
was involved in a music business course at Wyong TAFE. It was during
that time I had my first real success, with one of my songs Two contenders for your crown, finishing in the top ten of the Australian Songwriters Association National Songwriting Contest in 2000.
For me to write though, I have to be inspired, or I have to feel so strongly about something that I must write. My inspiration comes from a variety of sources, but more often that not there's a woman involved. For example, the first draft of my long suffering fantasy novel (over twelve years in the writing), Blutmunth, was only finished when a young lass (from the music business course) showed an interest in it, seeing she was an aspiring fantasy writer herself. Then there's all the love songs/poems I've composed over the years. The last “muse”, Michelle, got at least a dozen poems written about her, the last of them being She came, she saw, she conquered which was written in May. As for poems not inspired by women, well, I have written quite a few social commentaries, some others about random events which I have witnessed or have been a part of, and even political pieces, including a handful about the current gulf war. One of them A really bad western, was even published in the United States in the VoicesNet.com anthology number four, however, it didn't make it into the UTS writers anthology.