In the early nineteen nineties I did what so many Australians do in this gorgeous country.
I left.
My best friend, an avid writer, travelled with me. She was always writing, and her vibrant, well written, interesting stories fascinated me.
It turned out, her passion for writing was contagious.
Email and internet cafes were still a few years away. In Europe and the Middle East, calling home was shoving coin after coin into a payphone and talking really fast or reversing charges. Either way – it was never a quality catch up with family back home.
So, we wrote down our travel adventures, cramming as much as we could on postcards and aerograms and sent them home.
There was this one time in a McDonalds in Germany that really stands out. The back of their paper placemats were white, so while sipping our thick shakes, we filled every centimetre with vivid descriptions of places we’d been to, the characters we met and experiences we had.
There was always so much to write about.
So much I wanted to write about.
Settling in London, day to day life took over and fortnightly calls home took over from the letter writing. I thought the passion for writing, my best friend had inspired in me, was gone.
It wasn’t.
One Monday morning waiting for the tube to work, I had a thought. More of a what if?
About one night in a London nightclub. Two murders, six suspects, no motive.
It was a ‘novel sized’ writing idea.
It’s been nearly twenty years since I left London. My best friend stayed. I moved to Sydney and writing became a big part of my life. It became something I just had to do.
My happy place.
That novel sized writing idea grew to 80,000 words in mere months. Pounding on my laptop after work each day.
Recently, ten years since I’d last seen her, my best friend came to visit. I found myself in the very unlikely position of inspiring her to write.
She's far more talented than I am!
A few days after she returned to London she sent me a picture. It was taken in a small café and she was writing.