What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you could?
Write.
No, darling, let me explain before you start wondering whether I’ve suffered some sort of literary amnesia. Of course I knew how to put words on a page.
I mean write.
Sit down with a blank page, take an idea that might have been nothing more than a passing thought, and turn it into something another person might want to read.
When I started, I didn’t have some grand plan to become a columnist. I wasn’t sitting in a café with a leather-bound notebook, gazing thoughtfully out of the window while waiting for inspiration to strike.
Good heavens, no.
I had a prompt.
A question.
A blank page.
And the slightly uncomfortable feeling of not knowing quite what to do with any of them.
But I gave it a go.
Then I did it again the next day.
And the day after that.
Somewhere along the way, something rather unexpected happened. I stopped worrying quite so much about finding the right answer and started becoming curious about where the question might take me.
A prompt about a place became a reflection on belonging.
A question about kindness became a conversation about the people we overlook.
An ordinary little observation turned into something I hadn’t realised I wanted to say until I started writing it.
And slowly, I began to recognise my own voice.
Not somebody else’s idea of what a columnist ought to sound like. Not a carefully assembled collection of clever phrases.
Mine.
With my peculiar turns of phrase, my fondness for a little mischief, my old-fashioned expressions, and my tendency to wander off down a conversational side street because something interesting caught my eye.
I discovered that I didn’t have to know what I was going to say before I began.
Sometimes I had to start writing to find out.
And that, darling, was quite a revelation.
Because I suspect we do this to ourselves rather often.
We imagine that the people who can do something remarkable have always known they could.
That the confident speaker was born comfortable in front of an audience.
That the successful artist never doubted a painting.
That the writer never stared at an empty page wondering whether there was anything worth saying.
Perhaps some people do begin that way.
But I rather suspect many of them simply started before they felt ready.
They learned by doing.
They got things wrong, tried again, and discovered abilities they couldn’t have known they possessed without giving themselves the chance.
That’s what writing has taught me.
You don’t always need confidence to begin.
Sometimes beginning is how you find it.
So, what’s something I’ve done that I never thought I could?
I’ve learned to trust my own voice enough to share it.
And I’ve discovered that the blank page isn’t something to be frightened of.
It’s an invitation.
You never quite know what might happen once you accept it.
Stay Fabulous,
Luce 💋
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