My writing journey

As a young child, I’m not sure I knew what writers were. I never met a writer. I never saw one on tv. No writers ever came to my school. I didn’t read about one in a magazine or even in a book. No-one told me that A A Milne was mean to his son. I didn’t know that Enid Blyton was an inadequate mother or a racist, or that Beatrix Potter bequeathed land to the National Trust. I only knew that stories were my home.

As a teenager I learned that writers were dead, white males. Though I spent hours on English homework and was always top of the class and though my boyfriend wrote comics and novels, I never saw myself as a writer.

I learned about women writers at university but never thought to write anything myself though I always knew that a writer was what I wanted to be.

On my PGCE, I wrote a creative essay about myself as a reader. ‘Yo'u’re a writer,’ my tutor said. She said I reminded her of Berlie Doherty and that my piece should be on Radio 4. I’ve never heard of Berlie Doherty, or of Radio 4.; I didn’t come from that kind of family. But that tutor was the first person to call me a writer. She sowed a seed.

I did a WEA creative writing course. I fell in love with another writer. I got divorced from my young husband. I did an MA.

Along the way, I met other writers who showed me that it was possible. Somewhere I claimed the title for myself. Writing became the foundation of my existence and my identity. Writing was waiting for me all along. Waiting for me to find it, or it to find me. Writing is now my home.