Writing for a living - I'm going to write a novel

When I left school I was in a quandary, should I try for a job with our local newspaper or take the job I had been offered with Barclays Bank? On the one hand I love to write and really fancied being a cub reporter with the Bootle Times Herald but without a degree I was told that I would be making the tea and collecting the wages from the bank rather than wandering the streets of Liverpool in a trench coat with a high powered camera slung around my neck.

Barclays on the other hand offered a career. Admittedly any career prospects would only have come in to play after my 25th birthday because as a member of the 'women's' staff it was presumed that before then I would get married and have babies and give up working to to find true fulfillment as a woman - (I kid you not, this really was how woman staff were regarded in 1972). Well at least I wouldn't be making the tea and I would be earning £12.00 a week.

So common sense and a lack of confidence set me on the road to a career in banking. And what was my first job? you've guessed it - making the tea - but it wasn't all bad and over the years I had some interesting jobs, made some good friends and found a husband all thanks to Barclays. I never lost my love of writing though and have always kept holiday journals and have even written school plays and a kids panto (for my sins). I have found writing regularly for Spanish Steps a challenge this year. It is amazing how much research is involved in planning a soap set in Spain, everything from the actual location of the set to choosing names for the characters can take ours of searching, to say nothing of the time spent planning plot lines and character development. But I think that it has been worth it and with a growing number of regular readers I can honestly say that I am a 'published' author.

So what's next? Well obviously I would like to start making some money from my writing and hopefully this will come in time but in the meantime I have a new idea. I would like to write a novel, you know the old saying that we all have one novel inside us? well mine is about to burst forth. Not one to take the easy road and lock myself away and just type in isolation I am planning to write my novel online. Instead of having conversations in my head about how I am going to plan and develop I will be talking 'out loud' to an audience of blog readers. I want to be able to explain why the characters are saying what they are saying and do what they are doing. I want to have this conversation and then write the novel in real time i.e the reader will see the novel grow as I am writing it, all the editing, all the changes and probably some of the foul language when I am sitting there desperately trying to work out what happens next.

I don't pretend that this will be some kind of literary masterpiece. I am after all just someone who loves writing rather than a proper writer but I can promise that it will be honest. I have always been fascinated how books are written, how the authors mind work, where they gather their information from etc and maybe if you feel the same you will enjoy reading about mine.

In the next couple of weeks I hope to get the new blog up and running - when I do - you'll be first to know