I must have been 13. I remember sitting on the ground, with all my classmates, as we listened to a presentation from the kids in the year above us.

At the end it was question time and I raised my hand to ask about a subject they seemed to have forgotten to talk about – my favourite subject. “Do you have Writing Class?” The (must have been) 14 year old boy looked at me like I asked him whether he thought he was an alien. My teacher stepped in and let me know that in the year above, there was no writing class.

And that is where I stopped writing. It is also where I stopped asking questions in fear I would get that look again. Particularly from an older, cuter boy.

Forward to where, at 26, I reluctantly agreed to have my palm read at the Melbourne Cup so my mum didn’t have to be by herself with the scary palm reader. He fit the look of a palm reader. He also fit the look of a bikie who was about to find out whatever information he wanted at any price. All his hair was in his long greying beard, his earlobes were painfully stabbed with large earrings (more like spears of steel) and his eyes were so pale blue they didn’t have much life behind them.

As I gave my palms over, his wrinkled hands opened them out. Now, I believe in magic and mystic – horoscopes, fairies, angles, people who talk to the dead, people who tell your future, reincarnation. But I don’t really want to know my future. And I didn’t believe this guy, who was hired to perform to those who had gained access to the inner circle at Melbourne Cup, had much to tell me. Regardless of his appearance.

He looked up from my palms and disclosed a secret I had been keeping bottled inside me since I was 13, “Why aren’t you writing?”

So here I am, after 3 years of being haunted by the palm-reader-slash-bikies question. I am starting to write.

I first attended several courses with the Sydney Writers’ Centre and now I am a regular writer for Flemington Kensington News (in addition to my ‘real’ job working for charity).

My blog is all my personal thoughts that whirl through my head. And will probably become a space for story ideas that no one wants but I feel are worth writing. And (fingers crossed) my publications page will grow to include other magazines and newspapers.