It was 26th February 2002.
I picked up a new, A4, spiral-bound Harry Potter notebook and jotted down my idea for a story.
“Late-teens girls moves into old manor house with family. Little does she know, inside is a portal to another world/time/dimension. It becomes her job to guard this portal from the evil things on the other side, with the help of a teacher and several friends from both portal sides.
A mixture between Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
I can’t remember where the idea first came from; perhaps I’d been watching too much TV. I was already obsessed with Harry Potter, had been for nearly a year, and I’d always thought I could be a writer. Now, having had this idea and committed it to paper, I was suddenly bound to start writing, to prove to myself that I could do it. I was in my final year of university (not a good time to develop a new obsession), feeling lonely and suffering from low self-esteem and depression. I saw writing the book as a way out of all of that, a way to validate my existence on Earth and prove to all those who had ever bullied me that I was better than them.
It felt so easy. I finished the first draft in about a year and at 50,390 words I was incredibly proud. My first whole book! I had saved giving it a title, but did so now. I can still vividly remember pacing the floor of my flat, turning ideas over in my head. It was the first of a trilogy, so I wanted three titles that would fit together. Eventually I named the first book: ‘The Sillow Orb, Book I: The World Beyond’.
I immediately gave it to an agent, who was the father of a friend of a friend. He made positive noises about it, but ultimately rejected it and suddenly it became clear to me that I wasn’t going to be the 21-year-old genius who’d written a best-selling book. With all my heart, I held onto the thought that perhaps it would just take me an extra year or two.
Over nine years on, that book languishes on the table, unpublished, unrecognised and virtually unread. I look at the hard copy I have (now 84,879 words and it is actually available to buy through Lulu.com) and I feel all the pride, anticipation and hard-work seep out towards me. But it’s tempered now with realism, with the knowledge that it’ll probably never be published. That I might never be published, never walk into a bookshop and see my name on the cover, never be asked to do a signing, or a reading.
The thought chokes me. To live without this dream would be the end of me. I am in a much happier place in my life now, but sometimes I wish I could go back to 2002, to have again that feeling of certainty that this book was going to be the making of me.
I need to be strong, to hold onto the thought that one day I will be published. If I were to give up it would be the biggest regret of my life. So I will continue.
Dreaming of Writing... 