Estelle Van de Velde

Considering myself a writer, an author, has always been a struggle. You’ve got all the clichés surrounding the job sticking to you like a sickness: is it a real job in the first place? sigh It’s still an everyday battle… with myself!

I’m Estelle Van de Velde, Belgian author. I've written stories since I've been able to decipher the alphabet. But I haven’t considered myself an author until recently.

Estelle Van de Velde front

What changed? I experienced a lot of things. From copywriter to copyeditor, writing mentor for a charity and organiser of my own creative writing workshops, I was always coming back to what I love the most. And that is writing.

If you haven’t discovered my work yet, I encourage you to try out Volte Face and Finding Maxwell, two short stories I have dared to put out there to find their readers. My style is what you would call fantastic in French literature. It’s a mix between reality and imagination, kind of a blend between contemporary fiction and fantasy.

Being a writer is hard work.

But being a writer is hard work. It’s not because you can put two words together in a sentence that you’re a good writer. Everyone has their own idea on what it takes to be an author. Mine is that an author writes full-time.

A writer encounters many challenges along the way: misinformation, lack of motivation, disorganisation and procrastination. I have thought of my blog as a platform in which to get all the information a writer needs to write, edit, publish and promote their books. Because that’s what I also needed.

A writer encounters many challenges along the way: misinformation, lack of motivation, disorganisation and procrastination.

I helped writers unleashing their own creativity and imagination during writing workshops. In these sessions, they were invited to read and share the story they had just written, and to give feedback to other texts. The workshops were always a time of growth, of beating procrastination and get together as a group.

In 2015, my husband and I made a big leap of faith. We moved to The United Kingdom.

I jumped on the occasion to do a Masters in Creative Writing at Brunel University London, where I learned a lot about the craft of stories but also the ways to promote yourself as an author. I also volunteered at The Ministry of Stories, based in Hackney, where I helped children write their own stories.

That’s also when I decided to take up the writing path as my personal and professional journey… in English! I have founded this website and self-published Finding Maxwell in 2017, and haven’t stopped since then. You can check out what I’m up to on my Author Journal.

We moved back to Belgium in 2019. I am now balancing two careers: one as a content manager for a B2B tech company during the day, the other being writing my ass off on my own personal projects during the night.

Writing books is a dream of mine since I was little. I am continuing my journey and hope you’ll join me along the way!

Estelle Van de Velde back

My Career Path

My Education, Training and Personal Development