156 ratings | 2 reviews | avg rating:3.58

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Lizzie Steel

Goodreads Author

Born

in The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.lizziesteel.com

Twitter

lsteelauthor

Genre

Romance, Historical Fiction, Fiction

Member Since

December 2012

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I thought authors spent their days sitting writing avidly at beautiful desks in inspiring places, sipping sophisticated coffee-based drinks and oozing intellectual creativity. I thought once in a while they might go to a coffee shop, sit in the corner mysteriously, and pour their soul out in words whilst the chaos and noise happens around them. I thought authors were disciplined, working a set number of hours a day, writing a set number of words. I thought authors were grammatical Nazis, I thought they loved punctuation and went everywhere with a red pen, itching to correct someone.

I am signing up to join a new dentist.

"Occupation?" the receptionist asks.

I open and close my mouth repeatedly whilst my mind goes blank, despite the flurry of a I thought authors spent their days sitting writing avidly at beautiful desks in inspiring places, sipping sophisticated coffee-based drinks and oozing intellectual creativity. I thought once in a while they might go to a coffee shop, sit in the corner mysteriously, and pour their soul out in words whilst the chaos and noise happens around them. I thought authors were disciplined, working a set number of hours a day, writing a set number of words. I thought authors were grammatical Nazis, I thought they loved punctuation and went everywhere with a red pen, itching to correct someone.

I am signing up to join a new dentist.

"Occupation?" the receptionist asks.

I open and close my mouth repeatedly whilst my mind goes blank, despite the flurry of activity. What do I say? Am I between jobs, am I a stay at home Mum, do I work from home? There's no way I can say I'm an author.

"Housewife," I reply.

The word is out there before I realise what I'm saying. What even is a housewife in this day and age? I am a wife, I stay at home, but I'm sure the state of my kitchen would argue against the term 'housewife' with its scouring and dusting connotations.

How could I possibly say I'm an author? My boring Ikea desk is stuffed in the corner of my daughter's playroom, cluttered with bills, Barbie accessories, and failed attempts to copy Pinterest creations. Instead of writing avidly, on average days I sit at my computer and write a thousand words at most, often in the full knowledge that I will delete them the next day. On a bad day, the word count plummets to seventeen. I can't do punctuation. At all. It's so bad, I actively avoid the keys on the right of my keyboard in case I accidentally hit a semi colon and it changes my whole story.

I don't even like coffee, regardless of how much milk and syrup is put in to camouflage the bitter taste, to me it still tastes like I'm not grown up enough to drink it. In my quest to be a real writer, I went to a local tea shop one morning. I hoped to find inspiration whilst living out my dream and sitting with pen and paper within its comforting pastel walls. In reality, the noise and bustle was too much, and instead of writing, I spent four hours watching people come and go, whilst drinking tea and eating cake that I couldn't afford.

Those thoughts have been going through my head for the last eight months. Who am I - what am I?

Then suddenly I did it. I wrote the two words I thought I would never reach...The End. Suddenly there was a book before me. 100,000 words that I painstakingly wrote. Each one considered, each one a brushstroke towards my masterpiece. In two weeks my masterpiece will be published. Maybe people will read it - maybe it will only ever be me and my editor that reach the end. Maybe people will like it, maybe they won't; but whatever happens next, I have achieved what I have set out to do - I have earned the right to call myself an author. ...more

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Combine Editions
Lizzie Steel’s books

Average rating: 4.34 · 64 ratings · 26 reviews · 3 distinct works

	Running Home 4.32 avg rating — 37 ratings — published 2015 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Life More Complicated 4.41 avg rating — 17 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	All The Light She Held Inside 4.30 avg rating — 10 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

Lizzie is Currently Reading

Lizzie Steel is currently reading

Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)

by Tahereh Mafi

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Dec 05, 2021 07:52AM

Lizzie Steel is currently reading

A Deal with the Elf King (Married to Magic, #1)

by Elise Kova (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Oct 23, 2021 03:13PM

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