When and why did you decide to pursue writing as more than a hobby?
I always wanted to write, or at least to make stories, since I was six. Maybe five. I was obsessed with rewriting fairy tales, and my own versions of them were, looking back, quite grisly. For example, Goldilocks would find Baby Bear lost in the woods, then raise him…only to have him turn around and eat her, once he was big enough!
My first audience (who were my nan and mum) would read these stories and be going, “Why so gory? What did she do to deserve that?” – and laughing – and I’d say, “’Cause it’s funny.”
The urge to write came around the same time I got the urge to make people laugh. It was only when I started to read the Roald Dahl books, and the Beatrix Potter books, then, a little later, the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, that I began to get the idea you could actually do this for a living. It was like, “Hey – wait a minute. These people are adults…and they get paid to scribble down whatever they’re daydreaming about?…I want to do that!”
I wasn’t sure how. I still wrote, though. My first novel, aged seven, was a farcical story about a family of rabbits who constantly fell out and beat each other up. From then on I was known, by close relatives, as ‘Potty’ until I abandoned that particular book. (If you can call all of fifteen pages a book.)
I didn’t try to write a proper book again until I was finishing my GCSEs. I have to confess, whatever opportunity I had, I’d whip out my notebook and start scrawling when I should have been revising…not in ALL my lessons, of course…how the teacher never noticed, I’ll never know. But the fact is, I wanted to write more than anything else, and this was because it was the only thing I could do well, (apart from wonky comic strips which haven’t seen the light of day). It was like swimming, or flying. Brilliant.
So, I typed up the novel, which was going to be a fantasy novel for older children – dead chuffed, I had it all set up in my head – and, aged sixteen, I posted it to a publisher. And I had no idea what I was doing. No idea of how the publishing side of things worked. I was flying, yes – but by the seat of my pants.
They were very nice about it. I got a long letter back giving me words of encouragement and some suggestions about what I should try first before actually spitting out a book. Still kept the letter. I have it lurking somewhere in a frightening corner of my drawers. (Chest of drawers, in case you were wondering.)
After that, I left it again for another couple of years. Did my A-levels, reasonably well, but by that time, I’d decided I didn’t want Higher Education. I wanted to get off the treadmill and get on with work.
So, I set out to learn more – finally. I did a course in creative writing with the Open University, read An Author’s Guide To Publishing by Michael Legat (written in the days when everyone used typewriters, but still interesting), got the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook, and it was like, “Oh!” (slaps forehead) “That’s how it works! You send shorter stuff to magazines!”
I’ve been doing just that (as well as poetry) for almost a year now, and I’m overjoyed to say it’s working.
Nightwalks 