I was lying in bed this morning imagining the day that I would make it as a writer. I visualized impatient readers queuing out the door of Waterstones, whilst I preferred to do personal book signings at the smaller independent booksellers. Richard and Judy would beg for my text to be their next book club choice; and such would be my success that Michelle Obama would likely fly in her private jet to ask me to write a review of her next autobiography ‘life after presidency’ and well, just to have a chat and a cup of tea with me.
 
It didn’t stop there. Library cataloguers, across the world would fight over whether my book belonged in the classical literature section or popular fiction – the dilemma existing because I’d been tipped to win ‘best new writer’ and the ‘man-booker’ prize in the same year (I’d obviously then go on to advocate for it changing to person-booker); and the advance I’d been paid for my second novel was such that Saint Mick of Thana could retire and spend as much money as he liked on golf clubs without me batting an eye-lid.
 
Well a girl’s got to dream.
 
So far I’ve not been very successful, but I’m keen to learn and improve.
 
Linda Newbery, a writer I hugely admire. once kindly read the opening of a story I was writing for upper primary kids called Jimmy Dumpster. It was my first try at a longer piece of fiction. She gave me some helpful tips on writing and suggested I should try to ‘show’ not ‘tell’ more. This is advice I’ve repeated to many of my own poor GCSE English students over the years, but it isn’t easy to do. In my story poor 11 year old Jimmy was down on his luck and went missing, only to spend several chapters traversing through the interior organs of his mum’s body as a result of having touched a magic box belonging to his grandmother. It was in the depths of his mother’s bowels that he had happened upon his good-for-nothing step-father, heading South and searching for an escape route. As I recall Grandma had been a kindly soul whose main fault, (in addition to leaving a magic box around that could cause all kinds of mischief) was to hang her outsized pants  on the kitchen radiator. Anyway, It will come as no surprise to learn that, about 10 000 words in, I abandoned the project. It seems fantasy/magic is not my forte.
 
Not to be put off I tried my hand again at story writing, this time with an older readership in mind. I aimed for a 1000 word a day output and lasted just over a week. The story was to be a hotbed of scandal and seduction and started with two sisters standing at the graveside of their abusive Uncle Pete, eyeing up the good looking pall-bearer who doubled up as one of the sister’s pizza delivery man. This part of the plot was to be developed into a who gets the guy cliffhanger. One sister worked as a disenchanted civil servant whilst the other one used her feminine wiles to live comfortably. Anyway, knowing little about feminine wiles, or what being a servant entails, you’ll appreciate that I ran out of umph and gave up.  It seems romance isn’t my forte either.
 
Evidence  suggests then that the possibility of anyone signing a book deal with me is as unlikely as winning the lottery – I don’t even buy a ticket and I haven’t thus far seemed capable of finishing a project. I’m not giving up on writing just yet though. Winston Churchill once said, somewhere, that “success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” (I don’t know much about Winston Churchill, but Saint Mick does, so that’s good enough for me to want to listen to him). 
 
I’m currently thinking maybe horror is the way to go – perhaps the antagonist will turn on their only friend, who has helped them recover from a severe mental illness, in an unexpected Jekyll and Hyde plot twist. Obviously I can’t give too much away because if I tell you I’d have to kill you! 
 
Watch this space and if you see Michelle or Richard and Judy popping over to my place for a cuppa feel free to join us. It will mean that success is on its way.