My mother always said I had an overactive imagination!
Ever since I could grasp a pencil I would write her little notes with ill-formed letters, full of love. I guess that was the start of my writing career.
Wendy Winton Johnson lives in south-east Queensland with her husband and a black and white cat.
When she’s not writing Wendy can be found at the beach, swimming in the ocean and watching her family on their kayaks. Her other passions include art and galleries and researching for new ideas for books and short stories.
“What am I passionate about in three words? Reading, writing and swimming. I’ve always loved reading. I’m convinced that to be a writer one must be a reader, avidly and constantly. How else can we get a broad understanding of different genres, and which ones best fit our writing. And where else can we gain knowledge of how lives and relationships are formed, and destroyed before we’re ready to embark on own writing career?
Wendy has lived most of her life in south-east Queensland, and with a wanderer for a father and 27 moves in eleven years and a half a dozen schools, of necessity she learned to fit in pretty much anywhere. From the fabulous laid back lifestyle of Surfers Paradise to the cosmopolitan New Farm in Brisbane, Wendy has made the most of all the opportunities that her home state can offer: sun, sea, sand and its colonial history. Perhaps her father’s peripatetic tendencies rubbed off as, over the years, Wendy she has travelled to every continent except Antarctica and immersed herself in many other cultures. But the best places she’s found have been in books.
Wendy writes in a range of genres, winning awards for short fiction and business writing. Watch out for Wendy’s two new historical fiction books.
Tallebudgera Creek on the Gold Coast in Queensland is her go-to happy place.
Since she was a child, family outings to swim and picnic have been a highlight of her week.
Once my daughter and I caught a seahorse and a couple of times on the outgoing tide there have been dolphins. Where the creek meets the ocean there’s a rock wall that juts out into the sea. During storms the ocean pounds and the waves crash over the rocks. In more benign weather, lazing on the beach looking up at the blue, blue sky is my idea of heaven.
Ancient history
Books have been my passion since my aunt gave me Winnie the Pooh for my second Christmas. Poor hapless Pooh, just as well he had the solid and reliable Piglet to guide him! My aunt then continued with Peter Pan and Wendy, and the Pookie series. I guess books were her passion too. I would cart them around looking for someone to read them to me, and I still have them. My favourite was a beautifully illustrated copy of The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear; a nonsense poem that made perfect sense to me as a four year old. I can still see the pea-green boat and the piggy-wig in the wood with the ring through his nose.
Come the junior school years she could be found most lunch times in the library.
The smell of the books, a landscape of possibilities lay before me, anything was possible … read more
My writing career
I suppose this is the boring part. Don’t we all have boring parts in our lives? That time when not much seems to be happening and we’re waiting for the stars to realign in our favour.
Wendy’s first introduction to professional writing was in the corporate sphere: policy, procedures, work instructions, flow charts. It wasn’t until she decided she wanted to move up the corporate ladder and she embarked on a graduate degree, an MBA at the University of New England (left) that she realised that she really loved writing.
At the time I still had a child at home, I worked long hours, and travelled for work, a lot — that I thought I could complete a master’s degree too is a testament to my stubbornness! Most of my essays were awarded Distinctions or higher. This was the catalyst to writing a few short stories. I suppose it doesn’t matter how we come to writing just that we come, kicking and screaming if necessary.
It gets better
My first short story won a prize! It was for six months manuscript development by a published author from the Queensland Writers’ Centre in Brisbane. The prize was sponsored by Logan Libraries in 2006. My original story was Book Crossing but the manuscript I chose to develop was my first book, historical fiction set in Brisbane.
For Wendy, it was a gruelling six months of study, homework, research into a different era and learning a craft far removed from university essays and business writing. She completed the first draft within the six months, and promptly put it away, unhappy with it and bereft of ideas on how to improve it.
I decided that I might not be a writer after all.
I returned to the corporate world, waiting for the stars to realign yet again. Soon a wonderful opportunity came my way and I was offered the role as editor of a local lifestyle and business magazine (the best fun ever!) I had previously interviewed and written short memoir pieces for a commemorative book and this was the catalyst for accepting the offer. Along with my business writing experience the fit was perfect. During this time I won an award for published business writing.
In 2015 Wendy started another historical fiction book, this one set in World War 2.
Half way through I’d wrangled myself into a plot corner with dates and events being wilful and just not jiggling into place. In the meantime, the pull of writing was still strong so I wrote a few short stories, Hannah Irvine’s Delicious Secret, The Farrier’s Wife and Racing South, and finished Book Crossing. They’re all in the suitcase.
Modern history
Fast forward to Covid19 lockdown, and what else was there to do? I read every Dan Brown book plus another twenty books. Some of these were in genres I’d never read previously and something started bugging me. I cannot make sourdough and yoga on YouTube didn’t reach out to me, but MY two books were screaming at me daily — FINISH ME!!
I think that lockdown gave me, like many others, permission to stop and take stock, to breathe, perhaps to write. Forget the housework it will be there tomorrow, toss aside the guilt of not going to the gym, just write. And that was when I found my writing mojo. Both books are now finished and I’m starting on a couple more. It seems once the imagination is given full rein it just wants to bolt.
And I’m swimming, once again being buffeted by waves and the unknown.