I’ve been asked in the past, on many occasions, by many different people, why I write or how long I’ve been writing. The truth is, I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t making up stories.
I have a memory of when I was pretty young, making a little “book” by folding sheets of A4 paper together. I used to do this loads and wrote stories about the Fish Wars. I don’t actually remember finishing any of those stories though.
I remember some of the stories I wrote when I was about six. There was the one where the blob people had a day out to the museum. And there was the one where I killed a dragon in the living room and my mum made me clean up the mess. It’s a shame my mum was never the sort to hoard school books and things because I would quite like to see some of those stories again. Ah well. Maybe it’s a good thing. They probably wouldn’t be nearly as good as I remember them being when I was six.
I remember when I was seven and I got worried because I didn’t get my English homework back like all the others in the class. It turned out the teacher wanted to display my poem on the wall.
I even remember the games I played. My sister and I used to play with Lego a lot. A heck of a lot. She used to like building extravagent houses and making towns on the big board that could slide under the bed. I was more interested in inventing the lives of the Lego people who lived in those houses.
I can’t imagine not creating stories. If, for some bizarre reason, all paper, computers, type writers and other writing implements were to vanish completely, I’d still be thinking up plot lines in my head.
That’s why I write. It’s not because I dream of being the next J K Rowling. It’s not because I hope to be famous one day. It’s not because I honestly believe I’ll be able to make a decent living from being a novellist. It’s simply because I can’t not write.
Whether my novel becomes an overnight bestseller or only sells one copy to my mum, I will be writing the next one.
