By Bronwen Leigh

I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read, or didn’t love stories.  My overactive imagination was my escape from the mundane or scary parts of life.  And from a young age I wanted to write these stories too.  My teachers would agree, my head was quite often in the clouds.

In my pre-teens I started writing stories about the adventures of my beany frog Mary. I was quite proud of these stories and so after writing a few of them l decided to take one into school to show my friends.  The resulting derision made me stop writing them – or at least sharing anything I wrote.

My writing was probably quite juvenile for my age – but in my defence I grew up with Enid Blyton and Kenneth Grahame, before moving onto Richard Adams’ Watership Down and Jack London’s The Call of The Wild.  I did (and do still) really like animals – I loved All Creature’s Great and Small and wanted to be a Vet!  And so it was perhaps no wonder I wrote about a frog, albeit a toy one.

Back in those days I was not a successful diarist.  Though I always started with great intentions each January 1st, I soon began to miss out days, weeks then whole months. However I always did write down little snippets of ideas when they came to me.

It would take until my 20s to again find the confidence to imagine I could be a writer for real.  As I finished my degree (in geology and cartography) and moved home, my lovely dad bought me a subscription to Writing Magazine and Writer’s News, as it was then.  I did a course with them too, but didn’t finish it – I think I was all studied out.  I still subscribe to this day, even though many copies have been largely unread.  I think I felt like I was part of something; something I really wanted to be part of.

As I turned 30 and was struggling to come to terms with my advancing years – I worked for a while with a life coach and she got me writing properly.  I began work on a Sci-Fi/fantasy story about a world locked in an ice age.  Working in the geography department at UCL at the time, I had great climate change knowledge on hand for my research.  The world building for this kind of novel was something I loved, and as I read a lot of Sci-Fi and fantasy back then the themes for this novel were well installed in my creative psyche.  I would read those hefty tomes on my commute to central London which helped me cope with the busyness of the trains and allowed me to be in my own world.  I did use music and the power of my Sony Walkman too, but mostly it was the fiction that kept me sane.

I managed to write the first draft of about half the story before my life changed when I fell pregnant (intentionally) and couldn’t think about anything other than being pregnant.  Work on the novel stopped.  I had planned to write while on maternity leave, I’d even bought a new laptop to help me write wherever I was with my baby.  It had never occurred to me that I would struggle to focus on fiction while pregnant.  But now all my creative energy was going into becoming a mother.

Unfortunately, just before my daughter was born, her father was killed in a motorbike accident.  Once again everything was turned completely upside down.  It was hard to focus on anything at all, but I actually did start to journal more often, keeping notes about how I felt and the progress of my baby daughter.  We moved to the south coast while I was still on maternity leave – and though that led to a hectic few months of travelling back and forth to work my notice at UCL, I felt calmer here.

Through the years since that terrible time I have journalled more consistently, and started many files and notebooks, each with different ideas for novels.  I briefly wrote a grief blog – finding the courage to share my story with the internet.  I didn’t have many readers and after the first bit of criticism I stopped.  I was fragile – even while having to be outwardly strong.  For years I put all my energy into being a mother and running a home, even though as the years rolled on, I became increasingly exhausted carrying that burden alone.  And when more tragedy stuck with the loss of my dad in 2022, and the following year with a cancer diagnosis for myself, I really was running on empty.  However it did all make my desire to get back to writing all the more urgent.

Late in 2023 I heard about Substack through author Beth Kempton who was advertising a free winter writing course on Facebook.  I signed up for the course and though it took a few months, in April 2024 I started my own Substack journey. I set up my blog – Clearing Out – about sorting out my messy cluttered home.  The thinking was that I would have to do the decluttering in order to have things to write about. It has kind of worked – but I still have a long way to go – though my mindset has changed, my energy levels have not and I feel I’ve barely scraped the surface.  Ultimately I thought once I had completed the house I could then use the posts to write a book about it.  That may still be on the cards, if indeed I do ever complete the house.

Encouraged by my new bravery with Substack, I began working on a fiction novel too.  The idea was in one of the many notebooks I had kept over the years, and it had been shouting for my attention fairly regularly.  It’s speculative fiction (so I’ve been told) and attempts to answer the question ‘how would two different societies react to and deal with the problem of a dwindling number of women being born’.  So this year I decided to go for it, and with the support of a couple of lovely communities here on Substack I’m 5 chapters into my first draft.  What’s proved incredibly productive for me is working alongside others on a zoom call (part of Suzy Walker from Heart Leap’s offering here).  It gives me both permission to use those two hours a week to focus on the novel, and the accountability of writing with others.  It may not work for everyone, but it certainly works for me.

My work and progress on the blog, though it’s been slow growing subscriber numbers, has given me the confidence to have faith in myself, and the knowledge that I can improve and grow as a writer, and that I didn’t have to be perfect from the start.  This thing I always wanted to do, finally feels within reach.  I’ve found people on Substack very kind and encouraging and I’ve learned so much from reading other Substacks – something I would recommend.  There is a lot of great work on this platform, and much of it is free.  I’d steer clear of the ‘I can teach you how to earn big on Substack’ type posts though, unless that’s your thing of course.

For some years, since writing a bit more seriously, I had been thinking about using a pen name.  I felt it would help me overcome some of the fear around putting my work out into the world again, and it has I think.  The name I now use was a natural choice for me as I had originally been given two middle names at birth.  I was adopted at 10 months and my parents removed the middle names as they didn’t go with my new surname.  They kept my first name as I was already responding to it and they liked it.  That name may well have been the catalyst or reason for my love of literature too.  My birth mother had been reading The Lord of the Rings when she was pregnant and fell in love with the name for a certain star shaped golden flower from the woods of Lothlórien – Elanor.  So I am Elanor, though I also feel the middle names I was originally given still belonged to me too.  I chose to bring them back into use as my pen name – Bronwen Leigh.

I will never not write.  I have given voice to my inner writer and let her out to play.  And as with Pandora’s box – that can’t be put back now.  Even if I am never published, other than here on Substack of course, I will still write my ideas, build worlds and let characters tell their stories – because it is what I love.

It’s always worth following your dreams and your heart – no matter how long it might take.  I am now 53, but there are (hopefully) still many writing years ahead of me to tell my tales and hone my craft.  If writing is in your soul, you can’t and shouldn’t deny it a voice, even if you do disguise it with a pen name.

Find me on Substack

Or follow me on Instagram @bronwenleigh2

When Bronwen is being Elanor in-between writing, she also runs Write Buzz Media, a support service for authors.

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