Not Just Yet

Do you ever feel like you’ve always been supposed to do something? Like there was some pre-ordained task or purpose that you know your life’s path will lead you towards that just sort of looms in your future, sometime, but you’re not there yet? ‘Bride’ and ‘groom’ know that one day they will metamorphose into ‘mother’ and ‘father’ but just not yet... that kind of thing?


I’ve always been a writer. My formative years are well documented by the diaries I used to keep. Forage around in our loft long enough, you’ll find boxes of them. Never intended for any audience, in the majority they existed purely for the purpose of a medium for my ‘will-he-won’t-he-call-me’ debates peppered with the occasional poignant observation about the state of the world/my life, etc. But the act of writing is something I have always done; this blog being testament to that fact when I swapped a biro and notebook for monitor and keyboard.

I’ve always wanted to write a novel. A voracious reader as a child and through to the present day, I always read anything and everything I could lay my hands on; happily diving headfirst into a world of someone else’s creation for three or for hundred pages. Always following up a recommendation from a friend: “Nick, you HAVE to read this...” But always, I have to admit, with a small pocketful of envy along for the ride reserved for those authors that were doing what I really always wanted to be doing. I like when authors put their photos in the back of their books. Why? So I can try to discern whether I might one day look like I belong amongst them.

For years I’ve (half) joked: “When I’m on maternity leave, I will write my bestseller so I don’t have to go back to work.” A lofty ambition, to be sure. But I am happy to report that I am actually doing it. Finally! I’ve always had a basic premise for a story... that is to say, for many years I have known a bit about the personalities of the people that would make up my novel, but it is only in the last few weeks that these personalities have started to come a little more alive in my mind. That the doors of the houses in which they live have opened themselves to me, and that the conflicts and twists and plots and subplots have started to materialise as an actual narrative. I never had a rock solid world for these people to live in – until now.

I’m writing this now because I’m celebrating the fact that is finally the time to start. But I’m also suitably petrified about the amount of work it is going to be. It’s not just a case of ‘once upon a time...and they lived happily ever after.’ I’m in a whirl of contrasting emotions – excited; daunted. Calm; anxious. Confident; small. AGH! But I may as well give it a try.

Watch this space.