My bedroom floor: scraps of coloured paper, half-torn pages and sticky glue – the place where my ten year old self unleashed her creativity without any inhibitions.

My bedroom floor was made of carpet, the worst material to carry out any type of craft work. But I produced some of my most creative pieces right here on this very carpet:

Bear stories, Fashion Models, titles unknown to the world, but instrumental to my ten year old creativity.

As Virginia Woolf once said:

“A woman must have money and a room if she is to write fiction.”

At ten years old, I was already planning my future as a writer. I had a room, (my bedroom), but no money. So I did what any ten year old did to earn pocket money; I diligently practised the piano, something that was akin to doing chores. By the time I was fourteen years old, I had amassed a fortune of $500.

Sixteen years after my unpublished titles first saw the light of day, I have everything I need to write fiction: a room and a job. 

So I’m continuing the legacy I started at ten years old: writing and producing books from my bedroom floor.

I wonder if my carpet still bears the old stains left by a ten year old me. Can I still see the worlds galloping by? Are the horses, kingdoms and stories still there where I left them last?

After all, I’m doing nothing new, just bringing the craft of fiction back to the bedroom floor, where many of us created our very own, first works of fiction.