I’ve been a bookworm all my life. I lived for quite a while with my grandparents and whilst serving in the Navy spent most of my leave with them. My grandmother read the daily local paper and a regular women’s magazine. I never saw her with a book and she never discussed any.
So where did I get my reading gene from? I can hear my grandmother, “I don’t know why we miss you when you’re not here; you don’t make any noise when you are here.” She commented on my pile of reading books and my silent journeys to other places and other worlds. And, “no wonder you don’t sleep well, your imagination must be over- worked.”
I had hundreds of stories in my head, and never once did I write one down. I failed my English ‘O’ level trying to write one of my stories about a space journey. I passed it when I wrote about something I knew; a farmers market selling pigs and sheep in rural Norfolk. It was at this point I decided I could only ever write about things I knew and even then they wouldn’t amount to much.
Since then, any writing I have done has been labelled woolly; I can write two pages for every paragraph I need to say. This has ensured I’ve always been well corrected or edited in writers parlance. I came into my own with academic writing, my ‘woolly’ writing was full of detail and just the thing that was needed for writing papers. My professor edited me as I edited him, and the world was in balance.
But I had stories I wanted to write, and I didn’t ever have time or the mental space to think about how to do it. I retired, and when I asked her how to write, Victoria Villasenor told me to start by writing something. I was too frightened to even start, and instead read some more books, my escape from anything too difficult.
The day came when Nicci and Victoria zoomed me from the Eiffel tower (they were on holiday in Paris) to get me to open my first book. They had shown me how to create the story in my head on to paper, they were patient with my woolliness and gaffs and forgetfulness (and yes, I was corrected and edited!).
I just wish my grandmother had been alive to see it; her silent granddaughter had words on paper for her overworked imagination and stories.
Valden Bush has become a great follower of cricket in the last few years and is waiting impatiently for the World Cup T20 in the UK in 2026. She otherwise spends her days writing about her latest idea. She loves walking in the nearby forests, which she can do from her home and with no need to get in the car. The rest of her free time is spent exercising, body boarding if she’s near a bit of surf, and travelling to different worlds with her reading.
She lives near Bournemouth with her wife of nearly forty years.
Facebook: https//www.facebook.com/valdenbush
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