I once had one of my essays read out in English class. I must have been about 14 at the time. It was quite a surprise, as our teacher never did stuff like that, but she had set us an essay with a start line and as usual I had left it until the last minute: 9PM on Sunday night. My last minute effort became 8 pages about a snowplough driver rescuing some people out of a car buried in a car stuck in a snow drift. My teacher loved it, and I was chuffed to bits.

I didn’t take much interest in school, but not because of school - more because of a few idiots (one total arse in particular) who I was not emotionally equipped to deal with. There was also that certain knowledge that it was all just time passing until I could drive, and bugger off to do something interesting. My mother threatened me with everything: pull up my socks or she’d send me off to boarding school, or take me out of school altogether. I knew it would never happen, and all I wanted to do was drive airfuel tankers at an airport somewhere and play my drums, and Economics was of little relevance in either field. Why did I give credence listen to my parents’ clueless guesswork when I was picking my exam subjects?!

Years later, I still enjoyed writing, and I suppose I harboured a desire to write professionally, particularly as I enjoyed reading good words so much. I signed up for a Writers Bureau course in 1999 ( a year of big changes for me) and did my first assignment. When I received the critiqued piece back from my tutor, I knew that writing was what I really wanted to do. I took a hefty drop in pay to change jobs and move to one of the UK’s leading motor trade publishers. Eight years later I am still there, working as an Editor.

I write freelance in my spare time and I love it. My focus this year (2008) is to push into new and slightly more widely-circulated areas, occasionally talking about things other than what I am used to. I only ever did one assignment for that Writers’ Bureau course, but there are forty to do and, as it’s an open-ended course, they can all be marked and assessed by a working tutor whenever you like. Finishing that course is the next step towards discovering whether I can really make a fully-fledged career out of this writing disease. Maybe it can be done. I am going to find out, one way or the other.

The “My Writing” section carries some of my writing to date, most of it published.