There was a time when I foolishly associated “being a professional writer” only with someone who wrote fiction.
Or a journalist.
From quite an early age, I’d decided that I certainly wasn’t the latter; those journalists I had seen (either in films or on the TV news) were clearly determined, news-hungry hounds with no compunction about door-stepping politicians or the victims of crime in order to get their front page/Nine O’Clock News scoops.
Instinctively, I knew that just wasn’t me.
So, even though I was into reading magazines from quite an early age (including my parents’ copies of National Geographic, back when every other issue seemed to include a photo-essay on some previously undiscovered, bare-breasted jungle tribe) I assumed that real writers wrote made-up stories published in books.
I’d learned the alphabet before going to school by collecting the plastic tops of Smarties tubes – and drawing and writing were what I was good at. So, as a child, I started drawing comic strips, either Doctor Who or highly suspect super-spy tales clearly inspired by The Six Million Dollar Man and James Bond.
By the time I started university, though, my focus had shifted to short stories. Few were finished; of those that were, only a small number left the house. Proportionally, most of those which did get out into the world actually found non-self-published homes somewhere, albeit non-paying ones with extremely limited distributions. But they were published.
The problem with my short stories, however, was that they just kept getting bigger, at least inside my head; by my late twenties, I was essentially starting to write novels – “starting” being the mot juste, of course, as I usually managed only a couple of short chapters before my interest waned. I’d occasionally produce synopses instead – essentially nicking existing plots and rubbing off all the serial number – but that didn’t really help either.
During this time I had become a regular member of two writers groups – originally one which met in Edinburgh, and then later one in Glasgow. They had a positive impact on my social life, but I’m afraid I was never the most proactive of members when it came to submitting work for critique.
Having eventually found paid employment as a magazine journalist, there were years when I didn’t consider it anything more than a way to use my writing skills to pay the bills. I still aimed to write either that “great literary novel” – I even had a title, A Trust in Uncertainty – or some lighter, fluffier science fiction adventure with a title that might even include the words Doctor and Who if I was really lucky.
Then two things happened.
Friends from both those writers’ groups started getting novels published by some of the biggest publishers in the UK. I was – still am – happy for them. Nevertheless, it was real-world evidence of the genuine difference been successful writers (them) and people like me who wanted to be a writer – they wrote! For a short while I even blamed the “tiring” magazine journalism for my lack of fiction writing, but eventually I accepted that I just didn’t possess the full-hearted commitment and perseverance needed to make it as a fiction author.
This blow was softened, admittedly, by a not-quite coincidental revelation – I use that word quite deliberately – regarding magazine journalism; that there were actually few experiences better (at least in my opinion) than seeing a magazine I’d worked on come back from the printers. Admittedly, this self-realisation was tinged by annoyance – that I hadn’t realised, for example, the extent to which contributing to magazines had been something I’d always been interested in doing.
Let’s just say that hindsight can be damned annoying on occasions.
I no longer dream of being a novelist. I’ve not given up entirely on the idea of writing fiction at some point – “Never say Never,” after all – but if that popular aphorism is true, then I genuinely believe that any novel that might be lurking inside me is best kept precisely where it is for the time being.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ve completely given up on seeing a book with my name on it, however… 😉
