?? When I was seven I wanted to be a writer. When I was 11, I wanted to be a choreographer. Thirteen, trampolining coach. Fifteen, television screenwriter ("the female Josh Schwartz" is how I phrased it). At sixteen, I wanted to be a fashion buyer for Selfridges. Seventeen, fashion designer (or, more honestly, Central Saint Martins student). And finally eighteen, and writer rolled around again. Somewhere in amongst all that was also nurse...don't even ask.
?
There are many moments that have contributed to my wanting to be a writer: when I was obsessed with Jacqueline Wilson, when I read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time (age 11 and yes most of it went right over my head), every time we had to do creative writing in English (so exciting!). Or the times I won prizes. Or when I realised that writers don't have to go out to work and therefore can stay in their jammies all day, listening to music and eating biscuits, and call it work.
?? BUT I'd say that the moment when I actually decided to be a Writer was when I decided not to go to university. Shock! Horror!
What happened was, I had a place at Goldsmiths for Social & Cultural Studies (blahblah, what does that even mean?!) but then a few of my friends decided to take a gap year to go travelling. Another of my friends had issues with her course that meant she was ended up taking a year off. So...I took a gap year too! (Just for the lolz). And then another of my friends missed her grades to get in so she had a year off as well.?Gap year was awesome, probably the best year of my life (so far). I didn't have a job (sucky because I had no money but fun because I didn't have to do anything after fourteen years of school), and we just hung out at each other houses or went to the cinema on Orange Wednesdays and ate a lot of snacks. Inbetween I started writing my second novel. My days went like this: wake up, watch Desperate Housewives, go out, write until three in the morning, go to sleep, repeat repeat repeat.
I was having so much fun doing this that I came to realise that I didn't want to stop doing it. Why should I move to London to live in halls, get the shit ripped out of me for not drinking, and stress myself out writing essays and giving presentations when I already knew what I wanted to do? Because I didn't really think a degree in Social & Cultural Studies was going to make much difference in the end: it wasn't going to make agents read my query or people buy my books. (Please say it wasn't, otherwise I have made a biiiiiiiiig mistake!)
And then the issue was, how do I tell my parents that I don't want to go and I would be living in their house for another year (or five)? Well, it turns out that all you have to do is find the perfect location (in Tesco by the DVDs) and blurt it out ("Mum I've been thinking and I don't want to go to uni is that alright are you angry alright I'm going to go over here and look at these CDs now.")
So once that was done that was when it was like, wow. Better get writing and actually try to get published then (ohshitwhathaveIdone!), which is what I've been doing for the last year. This writing business has been so much fun, taking webinars, blogging, talking to other people who are doing exactly the same as me - and when I think that I might have been at uni missing out on all of this, I am so glad that I'm not there, and i don't regret my decision at all. I might never get published or become The Next anyone or anything like that, but I will always remember that the moment I became a Writer was in Tesco by the DVDs, which is so bloody prosaic I can't even speak*.
And that is my not-very-exciting origins story, but at least now you know it! I'm about to go and read everyone else's stories right now and you should too!
*Def joking
Source: http://onceuponatimelit.blogspot.com/2012/02/origins-blogfest-how-i-knew-i-wanted-to.html
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