SO… YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER?

So: I’m a writer. What I was first, however, was a Reader. Before I learned how, my big sisters and brother read to me, and I was taken to the local library in Cardiff once a week as soon as I was comparatively civilised – though I have the distinction of being physically evicted from there, too.

Why?

I borrowed a book (we were only allowed to check out one each visit back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth). No school (Saturday) so I could read. I’d made my first mistake. I’d picked a book with too few pages and finished it in about two hours. After lunch (well, dinner: we weren’t posh enough for lunch!) I walked back to the library to get another one.

When the librarian saw that I’d checked it out that same day, she refused to believe I’d finished it already. I told her I had. At that point she accused me of being untruthful, grabbed the back of my neck and marched me to the front steps. “Go home, you horrid child and read it properly,” she said.

From that time onward, I always chose the thickest book with the smallest print I could find – which introduced me to writers like Jack London and Charles Dickens – at the age of about 8.

When I was about 17, our local paper, the South Wales Echo, held a short story competition. Without much hope, I entered. And my story was published. I was paid a prize of £10 – a magnificent sum in those days.

My story was seen by Tony Austin, the editor of the Western Mail – the “National Newspaper of Wales”. He contacted me and asked if I’d like to try to write a feature for him. I actually had to ask what a “feature” was… But I wrote it, he printed it, and he actually carried on giving me assignments, eventually allowing me to be TV critic for two weeks while the regular one was on holiday.

I was given series to write, later – “Eight Steps to the Altar” before I got married, and later, nine articles leading up to the birth of daughter Number One. It was wonderful training in brevity…

When we moved to Monmouthshire I wrote for local papers there, too (where the brevity bit came into its own, because the sub-editor on one of the papers, if I’d been asked for 200 words, and had submitted 220, would amputate the last 20 words…). And I still wrote fiction.

I wrote my first children’s book, The Magic Apostrophe – and didn’t send it anywhere because I thought it was probably terrible. Then I heard about a place called Ty Newydd – David Lloyd George’s old home in Llanystumdwy, which houses the Taliesin Centre – where writers go to learn how… My husband insisted I applied to go – and paid for it, too.

And there I met one John Spink, Editor of Pont Books. He was the guest speaker on the last night. He mentioned that he was looking for children’s books with “strong female characters” because almost all the main characters of children’s books then were boys.

Think about it – Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. Dick and Julian (boys), George (girl but identified as boy) and poor Ann, who was the one who said “Oooo! Be careful” and suchlike and probably cooked three course meals on a campfire on Kirrin Island. Even Timmy the dog was a boy.

I tentatively mentioned that I’d just finished just such a book… He said, “Send it to me!” I did, though with no hope whatsoever of success…

Then, one Friday afternoon, I got a phone call: John Spink.

“About this book you sent me,” he began, and proceeded to tell me everything that was wrong with it.

When he stopped, I said in a (very) small voice, “Please may I send you the next one?”

“Of course!” he said. “This one will be published around July, I think!”

Which is why when my daughters came in from school, I was sitting on the floor clutching the phone and sniffling…

That was the start. That book, The Magic Apostrophe, was re-printed three times – and in the series it began there are now 15 books. Sadly, Pont is no longer publishing, but I’m still writing.

I’ve written 31 books now, mainly for children but also two adult historical novels about Owain Glyndŵr – the “Glendower” of Shakespearean fame.

Somehow along the way (with the incredible encouragement of my husband) I found myself at Cardiff University reading for an MA in Creative Writing – which led to a PhD… I was so uneducated I didn’t even know what a “Viva” was until I had to do one…

I became a school governor and reading helper at our local primary school, where a teacher suggested I help the children write a story. It went so well I spent the next ten years or so travelling the whole of Wales visiting schools and holding writing workshops. Best fun I’ve ever had…

If someone reading this also has an ambition to write, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, you need to be able to touch-type (which I can, thanks to my generous big brother who paid for me to go to commercial college when I was removed from high school at 15); imagination – and another source of income…

Which is, sadly, true…

Unless, of course, you’re the late, oh-so-great Terry Pratchett!