I think that other people’s journeys to writing are interesting. To take a little bookworm child, lost in her worlds under the duvet, and turn her into a person who signs her books in bookshops and has meetings with editors and gets messages from people who’ve read her work and it’s meant something to them… it’s sort of at once the most obvious transition in the world and also, impossible, surely? I used to think that is was impossible.
I offer you this long deep dive into my writing career in the spirit of dispelling this sense of impossibility. My way is absolutely not the only way - with hindsight, it is in fact very inefficient - but it is mine and I am happy to share it. This is what I did.
When I was a child, I wasn’t obsessive about writing. I did write stories, but it wasn’t all that I did. I also liked swimming and drawing and ACTING (really liked that) and, when I got older, drinking cider with my friends in Queen’s Gardens (teenage goth hotspot of 2000’s Hull). I was always pretty obsessive about reading - that was a constant. I went to uni to do English and Theatre Studies at Warwick (because I liked reading, and also plays). I did apply to one Creative Writing course at undergraduate, but it was my insurance place and I didn’t ever seriously intend to go. I didn’t take writing seriously.
At university, I also didn’t take my studies particularly seriously. I was busy! I did loads of activism and loads of drinking and loads of plays - Warwick had four different drama societies at the time, and I was president of the one that dealt with new writing. I was having such a good time! I spent all my summers at the Edinburgh Fringe working as a theatre technician for the princely sum of £50 per week plus a free place to sleep. Life was good.
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