A queer thought, but perhaps you're still discovering your voice? I am.

Last week I celebrated a milestone birthday. I loved turning forty, but the truth is there's so much I haven't done yet.

The pandemic didn't hit me hard, not more than anyone else. But the lockdowns happened to occur in the period I necessarily confronted lifelong questions about my heritage, my psyche, and my identity. Through lots of reflection and research, I've been healing key family relationships.

I suppose I could say that I deliberately consigned myself to life's slow lane.

That's fine, but entering my fifth decade , I haven't (yet) built the platform or the legacy of work I wish to leave as my tiniest contribution to the world.

What's more, I haven't been bold enough, or transgressive enough in breaking boundaries: moving beyond the (privileged) suburban civility I was conditioned by in High Barnet, north London.

I know I have a voice. I'm running a workshop for budding writers' in a few weeks.

I fear - I know - I haven't been using my voice consistently or radically enough to affect meaningful change.

As a writer I have many things I wish to say, but modesty and shame occasionally rise up inside of me when I turn on my laptop and begin to type.

But, I cling to this: I do have a voice.

The one thing that scares me the most in life? That I might not be using it to its fullest, ravishing effect.

Using our voices - using my voice

I used to work for respected health and care NGOs in the United Kingdom. Didn't I use my voice there to affect 'real change?'

Not to the degree I once assumed I could, or should. I spoke out. I suppose I'd say I did this quite eloquently at times, and about a wide range of social welfare issues. And when I did speak out, in the media or in meetings with MPs or government officials, I spoke from both the head and my heart. But I was inhabiting one persona. I was Analytical Andy. I could rehearse key lines worth repeating in interviews on BBC Radio, and I enjoyed what I was doing. But I wasn't exploring my creative potential.

There were -- there are -- so many other things I wish to say.

That's why I now write creatively. It's why I love experimenting with different forms, and stretching myself to see what I could use my voice for. It's why I also write as a freelance journalist.

I've recently written about living as a gay man in a country where to be gay is to break the law. I've written about what it can mean to attempt to become parents when you're in a same-sex couple. I explore topics that I fear could be taboo for some.

But this isn't nearly enough.

The writing imperative calls on me to dig deeper. I know I've only scratched the surface.

It's why I'm increasingly teaching creative writing, and encourage life writing as an asset for personal health and wellbeing. I encourage students and clients to write both as a tool for coaching, and as a life pursuit in its own right. Elegant prose is a means to many important ends, but I also believe we write because the freedom writing can provide us is itself a marvellous thing.

Our queer stories - my new workshop

In less than three weeks, I am leading a workshop to help explore our many diverse stories. It's for writers of all levels. It's titled 'Tender and Ferocious: Writing Our Many Queer Stories', and I'm running it in conjunction with the fab folks at the London Lit Lab.

What do I define as 'queer stories'?

I'd say that's a less interesting question than 'what do I believe queer writing can achieve?'

I'm less interested in what it might mean to be queer in terms of individuals' identities, or indeed their sexual orientation or gender identity, than what 'queer' might mean in terms of someone's willingness to explore their various personas. In other words, I don't care one jot who is or isn't LGBTQIA.

To choose to be queer can see us commit, whoever we are, to be our boldest, most peculiar, most daring, contrary or devilish selves.

We can be gobby. We can be trying.

Elsewhere, we might choose to be soothing and tender in a world that is getting louder and more vicious.

To be queer, I argue, can be the difference between quietly conforming, and deciding our individuality matters, whomever we might offend.

With queer abandon we can choose for our words to ripple as we commit them to the page. We can titillate, shock, and surprise as we craft new stories. We can go further: we can invert, question and ridicule the stories we inherited.

We all have a queer self, I like to think, but perhaps we've vetoed it for fear it will do damage to our reputations. We worry what we want to say isn't worth hearing, that it's our individuality - the queerest part of us - that threatens to discredit us.

What are your 'impossible stories'?

What will we be doing in the workshop on February 5th?

Through a series of readings, writing prompts and exercises, we will be looking at what we might have to say in our lives that we haven't yet said, be it in poetry, in our diaries, or through new attempts to write prose.

We will consider where we've experienced discomfort in our lives but haven't yet given this discomfort a name, and where the power of language can help us to make articulate words out of confused and shaming emotions.

We will ask what else we might wish to say, what we might use our voices for.

What, despite feeling urgent, have we not yet voiced?

What are our 'impossible stories', to borrow a quote from Saidiya Hartman?

In my 2.5 hour workshop, run in collaboration with London Lit Lab, you'll be leaving with some new material, certainly a new impetus to write, and possibly the fervour to write on a regular basis.

Perhaps one day you fancy writing the book you've always dreamt of drafting? If that's too overwhelming a thought, try your hand at writing flash fiction in my supportive workshop.

On February 5th, I hope to provide a welcoming, safe and non-judgemental space for anyone who wishes to explore what they might still wish to say through creative writing.

We should allow ourselves the flight of freedom to be wordsmiths, poets, or storytellers.

Each of us has a voice.

The question as the days pass is how we use it.

Personally, I need not just be Analytical Andy. I can be a dreamer, or a romantic, or possibly a polemicist. I can be braver.

I can say, 'fuck it', and through my writing, rage (not so silently) into the night.

I can write many more stories.

And I think you can too. You don't even have to consider yourself a writer.