As a writer and author, I have published articles, poems, essays, short stories, and books. Most of my work I have published myself both in printed and digital format. I\’ve also been published by a Norwegian publisher.
I did not start writing until late in my life. I was 35 years old before pen and paper gave any meaning to me, back in 2001. Before that, I only expressed myself vocally. I had really bad handwriting and a lot of typos, I never read anything other than newspapers, and I got really stressed if I had to write something that others should read.
But thanks to deep inner transformational work over a period of 18 months, many of the inner knots that held me down and stressed me out were untangled. And the main tools I used for this work were writing and reading books!
I wrote my own story having a dialogue with myself, contemplating the issues that had shaped my life. I wrote pages upon pages upon pages in my diary. Well over 1000 A4 pages of handwritten material manifested itself through my pen, and I consumed over 100 books in this intense transformational period.
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
Stephen King
One day a poem presented itself in my head, and shortly after a quote popped up too. And then another one, and another one, as if they came out of nowhere or were channelled through me. To my unscholarly mind, this was nothing short of magic.
200+ A4 pages of poems, quotes, and short stories was my start as a writer. All of these texts mirror my transformational process. To me, they were all really valuable and I read them over and over again, extracting inspiration and motivation from them.
When I revisited my early writings in later years, I can see that many of them would be weaker texts viewed with literary glasses on the tip of my nose. But viewed with both my heart and mind, I can still feel the magic!
The ones that will win the fight, are the ones that fight with themselves.
Tindejuv
In my early years, I wrote in the Norwegian language only. I tried to write some English texts, but they did not have the flow or the meaning I wanted them to have. I guess I needed to become better at expressing myself in my native language before I could try to master English, my second language.
Grammar and building proper and correct sentences were also a challenge to me, both in Norwegian and English. But I did not know this myself so I just wrote and expressed myself. To me, the sentences made perfect sense and I unintentionally made up a couple of new words along the way.
In the beginning, I used pen and paper and lived in offline mode. Later I became an online person and thus had access to spell check to improve my spelling both in Norwegian and in English. This has been a really important tool to fine-tune my writing skills. Is vs Are vs Were is something I still struggle with.
Even though I speak English quite fluently, my English writing has room for improvement, and then online grammar check is a really great tool. I am ever so thankful for these excellent tools!
I\’m not aiming to become perfect in either Norwegian or English writing or language. My aim is to keep on developing my writing skills so that I can clearly communicate with whoever is reading my writing. Literary people that get frustrated over typos and grammar hiccups, will probably not be the ones that read my stuff after all.