"Claim Your Right" by Doreen McNicol

You could be writing poetry or the next great best seller, you are a writer the moment you sit and write that first line. Don’t trip yourself up with, “Oh, I’ll be a writer when I publish,” I did that and I’m sorry I did. I’ve been a writer since the day over thirty years ago when I went into my school library on my spare and pulled out a piece of paper to begin a story I thought no one else would read. It was meant for a special kind of reader ____ me and that made me a legitimate writer in that instant. The fact the writer and reader were one in the same was irrelevant. The only difference between a published writer and an unpublished writer is practice and the courage to share the work. That’s it. You may receive a million rejection slips but I promise you will improve and if you continue to you will get there. I did and with more drive I will go further and so will you. See you on the road.



I started writing as a teenager. I started just to see if I could do it and before I knew it my first story was 130 pages long with a number of my friends and a few of their mothers as my readers. I finished my first full length novel when I was 19 with a pencil and paper. My next novel was completed a year later. I continued with a few other novels after that. Yes, (LOL) all hand written. My typing is horrible. I did not write for the next few years as I moved around from city to city, living in Winnipeg, Calgary and finally settling again in Kelowna, British Columbia. I eventually returned to my love of writing and soon sought to publish. My first published novel, 'Rachel Wicks' came out in June of 2011 with Solstice Publishing with it's sequel published this year, 'Rachel Blackburn'. I have also released a third novel entitled, "The Starlings of Chatham Street", this year about life inside a workhouse. Along with writing I enjoy exploring my creative side through photography and painting. I enjoy reading about history and travelling to historical sites.