I’m now often asked how I became a writer. The answer is not straightforward because writing was not my first act of reinvention. Long before I wrote a novel, I had already lived several professional lives. I built businesses, launched ventures, worked with brands, navigated successes and many failures, and discovered more than once that what had served me in one chapter of life was no longer enough for the next. Looking back, I can see a pattern that I didn’t recognise at the time.
Every few years, I became someone new.
For a long time, I viewed this tendency with suspicion. Why couldn’t I simply settle? Why was I aways moving towards a new challenge, a new idea, a new way of seeing the world? I wondered whether reinvention was a flaw, a sign that I lacked consistency or certainty.
Age has given me a different perspective.
Reinvention
Now I see that reinvention is not necessarily about abandoning who we are. Sometimes it is about discovering who we are becoming. Perhaps it is a coping mechanism – life has a way of presenting us with disappointments, loses, unexpected turns and uncomfortable truths. Reinvention can be a response to those experiences. It can help us adapt when the person we were is no longer equipped for the journey ahead. But I have come to believe that reinvention is also a form of transformation. It requires curiosity, courage, and a willingness to let go of certainty. Those same qualities, I later discovered, are essential for writing.
Many aspiring authors imagine that published writers possess confidence from the outset. They assume that successful novelists sit down with complete clarity, knowing exactly what they want to say and exactly how to say it.
My Experience as a Writer
My experience has been very different.
Writing begins not with answers but with questions. The title of my first novel, Ask Him, reflects that belief. The story follows Rachel Bickerton as she searches for her missing son, Matt. On the surface, it is a mystery. Beneath the mystery lies a deeper exploration of grief, consciousness, perception, and the unseen forces that shape our lives. The novel asks questions about what we know, what we believe and how we make sense of experiences that seem impossible to explain. As I wrote, I realised that the book was asking many of the same questions that had accompanied me throughout my own life. Questions about purpose, meaning, loss, connection, and transformation. Questions that do not always have neat answers. In fact, some of the most important questions never do.
Ask Him became the first book in The Sandbox Trilogy, and the title of the trilogy now strikes me as unexpectedly appropriate for the writing process itself. A sandbox is a place of experimentation. A place where ideas can be built, dismantled, and rebuilt. Children instinctively understand that creation involves revision, they don’t spend hours worrying whether a sandcastle is perfect. They build it, knock it down and build it again. Writers often forget this.
Every Writer Starts with Uncertainty
Many people dream of writing a book, but relatively few allow themselves the freedom to write badly at first. They expect perfection too soon, they become discouraged by rough drafts, rejected submissions or moments of self-doubt. Yet every published book begins as something incomplete. Every writer starts with uncertainty, every manuscript starts as an experiment, every story requires patience. One of the greatest misconceptions about writing is that talent alone determines success. Talent helps of course, but I believe persistence matters more than people realise. Writing is a craft and like any craft, it improves through practice, revision, and a willingness to learn. This is particularly important for those who come to writing later in life, as I did.
Many aspiring authors tell themselves they have missed their opportunity. They believe they should have started earlier, studied literature at university, or spent decades pursuing a traditional literary career. They compare themselves to others and conclude that they are somehow behind. I understand that feeling. Yet my own journey has taught me that there is no single route to becoming a writer. Every experience contributes something valuable. The years spent building businesses taught me discipline, resilience, and communication. The challenges and changes I encountered taught me empathy and perspective. The many reinventions that once seemed unrelated became part of the foundation upon which my writing was built. Nothing was wasted. In fact, the richness of a story often comes from the richness of life.
Stop Waiting for Permission
The world does not need another writer trying to sound like someone else. It needs writers willing to bring their own experiences, questions, and insights to the page. If there is one piece of advice I would offer aspiring authors, it is this; stop waiting for permission. You do not need anyone to declare that you are a writer before you begin writing, you do not need perfect confidence, you do not need certainty, and you do not need to know exactly where the journey will lead. You just need to start.
Write the first page, follow the question that refuses to leave you alone. Trust your curiosity and be willing to experiment, fail, learn, and begin again but most importantly, allow yourself to evolve. Looking back, I no longer see my many reinventions as detours from the path – they were the path. Each chapter prepared me for the next, each ending contained the seed of a beginning and each question led to another. Writing has taught me that growth rarely happens when we cling to certainty, it happens when we remain open to discovery.
And perhaps that is the lesson at the heart of both writing and life. Not that answers matter less than questions, but that a life spent asking is a life still growing.
(c) Julie Savanth
About Ask Me by Julie Savanth:
When thirteen-year-old Matt disappears on his way home from school, his mother Rachel refuses to believe he is simply gone. Everyone tells her to let go. The police have no answers. Her friends think she’s spiralling. Even her husband, Dom, seems to want her to stop asking questions. But Rachel won’t give up.
As she begins to uncover links between Matt’s disappearance and a string of other missing children, a pattern begins to emerge. Then she finds the coded message Matt left behind, and everything changes. Because Matt saw something he was never meant to see. And the truth about where he went is more terrifying than Rachel could ever have imagined.
ASK HIM is a chilling, thought-provoking thriller about grief, love, perception, and how far a mother will go to bring her child home.
Order your copy online here.
And read more Writing & Me articles on Writing.ie here.
