March 25th, 2023 – 1,641

~ Sam Shuttleworth

“Who was your most influential teacher? Why?”

Her name was Mrs Hallows – I am so sorry if I have the spelling wrong on that. I had her for English Language in years 8 and 11. For context, as someone who couldn’t touch paper and had trouble focusing, I was pretty much in the dregs when it came to writing and English in general. I liked stories – my sister used to make them up for me and taught me how to be creative – but I found doing anything with words hard, and just didn’t bother. I think you can guess, over sixteen hundred words into a thousand words a day, with a deluge of stories before that too and now 14 novels under my belt, something changed. That was thanks to her.

I was in my first tabletop RP in over three years today. My last was near enough three years and a fortnight to the day ago, and it felt nice finally being back in one, and I even didn’t mind doing it digitally. The advantage there was I got to be in a campaign with my xirlfriend and it was lovely. And what’s super nice is I idly started writing beforehand, and hit target without even needing to think that hard, so today felt like, well, an actual rest day.

Published by Sam Shuttleworth

I’m Sam, and I live to write. I spent most of the first 8 years of my adulthood trying to balance writing with a large amount of crap in my personal life, until towards the end of 2018 I threw everything out and started afresh with just my writing. I built the new me around one goal: I have to write at least 1,000 words a day. I called this goal 1K, and it changed my life. So long as I write a thousand words a day, the day is a success, and atop that I've managed over time to build the life I wanted all those years. My greatest flaws as a writer is I still use too many adjectives, adverbs, connectives as openers, accidental passive voice and I don't force my work down people's throats enough on pain of extreme and unusual torture. My greatest strength is I know my greatest flaws and I'm working on them.