Life’s Rich and Unexpected Tapestry

It’s February 6^th at nearly 6.30 in the evening. I’ve been writing, interviewing and editing all day and only now have I got enough headspace to write my blog for More Than Writers. When I started, nearly three and a half years ago, my mind was simply bursting with ideas. As I’ve shared before, when Wendy H Jones asked me if I’d like to join the MTW writing team, I was beside myself with excitement. In that heady first year, I’d usually written and scheduled my blog a week or so before it was due and any time a call went out to fill a gap, I was there, eager as a springer spaniel puppy in the prime of its life.

Good Lord, I was enthusiastic! I feel quite tired thinking about it. Since October 2019 when I published that first blog, so much has changed in my life. I’m a full time writer with three novels under my belt. I’m writing a book of Pride and Prejudice short stories due out later this year. I still do freelance work, as well as critiquing, editing, public speaking and some tutoring. I’m older, slower and rather more ample. 

This is going to be my last blog for More Than Writers. I’ve been praying for a while about what to let go and it feels that I have come to the end of my season. I’ve loved it. Truly, it gave me my start and taught me the discipline of good blogging. Without More Than Writers, there would be no Isabella M Smugge and readers all over the world wouldn’t be thinking in hashtags and gnashing their teeth at caddish Johnnie’s behaviour. That original blog, knocked off in fifteen minutes and posted on 7^th April 2020 started something I could never have foreseen. 

I spend a lot of my time anticipating, waiting, looking to the future, but for this final blog, I’m looking back and acknowledging the steps that led me to this place and the people who were part of it. 

Books have always been a part of my life and for that I have to thank my parents. We had no TV and friends and socialising weren’t particularly encouraged, so the bookcase in our sitting room, stuffed with exciting looking volumes (none of them for children) drew me like a magnet. I had my own bookshelf in my room, stocked with books from birthday and Christmas and later bought with my pocket money from Loughton Bookshop. At primary school, I raced through the books in each classroom and I am deeply indebted to my teachers for encouraging me to read and write and push myself. Grammar school left deep wounds, but it also introduced me to Shakespeare, Austen, TS Eliot, the war poets and the joy of analysing narrative. 

At 27, just married and starting a job working for the new Head of Department in the Psychology Department at UCL, I chatted to Sarah, the girl who ran Educational Psychology the floor below me. “Why don’t you apply to Birkbeck?” she asked. “You’d walk it.” I spent four happy years doing my English Literature degree and I simply loved it. I’ve still got friends from that time and I learnt so much.

Another Sarah, a former member of my youth group, got me my start in freelance writing when she rang me one day to ask if I fancied a part-time job working from home on Stewardship’s magazine. I was pregnant with my third child at the time, living in rural Suffolk, but I jumped at the chance. Speaking on Radio Suffolk in February 2018 about Stewardship’s Lent campaign, I shared the green room with a chap who looked vaguely familiar. A chat revealed him to be none other than Tiffer Robinson (husband of Amy) who suggested I join ACW. And here I am. 

Becoming an ACW member changed everything. I met people who wrote in every genre, who were encouraging and generous with their knowledge. I’ve made lifelong friends. I learned how to use Blogger software, how to add images and format text and write a snappy, engaging blog. I went on writers’ days all over the country and marvelled at the bookshop, packed with amazing books on every subject under the sun. 

And now here I am, sitting in my Palace of Creativity with boxes of books, packaging and merch to my right and whiteboards with writing to do lists on my left. It feels like a miracle. And it probably is. Writing this has reminded me of the loving and gentle way God’s hand has been in my life right from the start. He took the dreams I’d crushed underfoot and tried to forget and reminded me that He's in charge and He will use my words, wherever they end up.

So thank you, to everyone. To those who comment on the blogs (and really, all the writers want to know is that someone is reading their words), to the committee who work so hard to keep ACW going, to those who have reached out to me, encouraged and advised me and sparked off so many ideas. 

I’ll really miss writing for this blog, but it’s time for me to bow out and to whoever takes over the 7^th of the month slot, I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I have. 

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28 

Images by Pixabay

Ruth is a novelist and freelance writer, the author of “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge”, “The Trials of Isabella M Smugge” and “The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge”. She is publishing a book of Pride and Prejudice short stories in 2023. Ruth is also a freelance writer and blogs at ruthleighwrites.co.uk. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter at ruthleighwrites and at her website, www.ruthleighwrites.co.uk.