Hey everyone,
It is a disturbing time in many ways right now, but also there are positives coming out of this horrendous worldwide situation. I think on the whole people are appreciating their relationships more, and, for some, they are expressing things they haven’t before. It has made me realise a lot of things. Made me see certain relationships that are important to me, that I didn’t realise the significance of until they were taken away, for a brief time.
It is interesting. I feel a lot of things will change through this pandemic. In some ways, I hope and pray that we realise the essential things in life and how this short life should be lived to the full.
My brother died at age 37 and I was very close to him. After he died I realised that I didn’t want to waste my life doing things I was meant to do, instead of things I felt called to do, or had a passion for.
I have always known I was a writer since I was a young child. I fell in love with words from the moment I learnt to read and write them. I fell in love with story as well. I wrote and drew comic books and drew pictures, wrote stories and made pop up books. So for me, I knew following the death of my brother that I needed to write every day of my life .That is my purpose, I know that for certain. I must admit it took me a couple of years to really embrace this, and I enrolled in my masters to focus on writing. I had wanted to do that since I had graduated from my first degree. Doing a masters allowed me to focus on writing, which my life had only partially allowed me to do. Since then I have written and published my first novel, Where the Sun Rises which took me 3.5 years and thousands of hours of research to write, even travelling to the Israeli and Syrian border.
That was an amazing experience and it is a novel I really believe in. Check it out if you’re interested. 🙂 It is about the real life phenomenal women who fought in Syria.
Anyway, in the past months I have written 54,000 words of my new novel working title, Sarah Johns. It is about a foreign correspondent from Sydney who is in my first novel. Now that I have written 75% of the novel and I am at a certain point where I know what is going to happen but the details are not set in stone. This is how I prefer to write, I know how it will end but not all of the details. It helps me to be inspired to keep going and exploring the idea, characters and where it is going.
I am thankful in this COVID time that I have had the time to write a first draft of this novel, as often we don’t have the time do we? I am extremely grateful for this. I am grateful for my family and friends as well and for health. I hope you are all keeping safe and staying well! Love to you all.
Kind regards, Suz
Suzanne Strong 