'How Is It That I Became A Writer?'

I'd like to start by saying I'm not sure that I am a writer.  I'm writing a lot at the moment, but my efforts over the longer term have been sporadic.

I do have an inbuilt creative urge, and it's been very difficult for me to find a way of expressing that without feeling massively pretentious.  Whenever I've acted on my desire to be creative, it's always been by writing.  Mainly because English was the only subject I did well in at school.

However, I'm really good at procrastinating, and I'm terrified of failure.  I've only ever sent one story to a publisher, and that was for a competition.  The story did get published (which was the prize) but I'd feel like a fraud if I called myself a published author.

I had a few years where I was fully engrossed in work and stopped writing.  Eventually though, work began to feel unfulfilling and I felt the need to write again.  The feeling got strong enough that I acted on it. I applied for university, quit my job (to the horror of my family) and moved to Winchester. Classic signs of a midlife crisis, but at least I didn't buy a Porsche.

I'm trying to write, not just complete the coursework, so I've joined a group of students called The Flashnificent 7 who create Flash Fiction, one new story each day.  I've also just created a site called Hierarchy Of One for non-collaborative work.  I’m hoping that if I can get to the end of the course and I’m still writing regularly, I might even consider myself a writer.