When did I become a writer?

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. My very first story was: “Once upon a time. The End.”

An instant classic.

But I’ve always had a pen and paper, scribbling down the odd dream and then imagining what would have happened if the alarm hadn’t chimed away. Eventually, I swapped the pen and paper for a computer and a keyboard, and I remember frantically typing away before bedtime, then saving my page-long stories on my bright-yellow floppy disk.

As I grew older, I became more obsessed with writing. It was habit to write a poem every night before bed, as a way to relax. Eventually these poems became fully-fleshed stories, including some Harry Potter fan fiction — so hilariously bad, I shall take it to my grave. My first original story idea came as a short fantasy-style murder mystery: it had three characters, so guessing the identity of the murderer wasn’t a particular stretch.

I tried writing in multiple first-person points-of-view (POVs) and eventually finished my first dystopian novel: an 8-POV mess called The Generation. This was a complete experiment for me: not only was I writing as 8 different characters, but I’d created an entirely new world — different cultures, locations, infrastructures, hierarchies… The works. Despite the chaotic switches between the 8 POVs, this book allowed me to stretch my creative muscles in a way I’d never tried before.

I wrote a few more fantasies after that, all set in curious worlds with strange creatures and evil villains. My first true epic fantasy — Of Fire and Ice — still holds a special place in my heart. This was the first story of mine to have a dedicated music playlist: James Horner and James Newton Howard soundtracks inspired a lot of the scenes, as did Skyrim (I lost hours of potential writing time exploring that troll-infested tundra). OF&I also became the very first story I shared with someone. My then-housemate read it in two days — despite the extensive typos and grammatical errors — and she even cried at the end. I’ll never forget the buzz when she told me how much she loved it.

Fuelled by over fifteen years of amateur writing experience, I began the first drafts of a new dark, dystopian fantasy. Over the course of several years, I wrote 500k words — and then admitted the story was terrible. What started out as an interesting premise ended up just being… Well, just bad.

But I decided to use this to my advantage. Now, I knew what parts of the story worked, and what didn’t. I now knew where the story was meant to go: the subplots, the character arcs, the clashing cultures… These 500k words were basically just a massive piece of story plotting, and now I could rewrite the whole thing, turning it into the story it should have been in the first place.

And so, The End of Everything was born. Of course, back then I had no desire to publish it. I just wrote it because it was fun, because it allowed the scientific side of my brain to rest and my creative muscles to stretch to the stars. I could turn my perpetual daydreaming into vivid scenes, or finally see how that elusive dream would have ended. I could pour my heart out in a way I never could in real life, or create characters full of the confidence and snark I wished I had. Best of all, I could see those characters grow — with me, I’d hope.

So why am I telling you this? Well, there’s a preconceived notion that to become a writer, you have to be good at writing. Perhaps a Creative Writing Degree here, or a Diploma there… That you have to write with the same exhilarating finesse as Margaret Atwood or Neil Gaiman (two of my favourite authors, btw), or have the same dedicated following as J.K Rowling or Leigh Bardugo.

I’m here to tell you, you don’t need any of that. I stopped English after my GCSEs, and I never studied anything to do with Creative Writing. And yet, I was writing well before I knew what a “plot line” even was. I wrote stories, not because I wanted anyone to read them or because I was convinced that it would be the next bestseller, but simply because I had an idea. I had characters scratching inside my head, begging to break free and be heard. Quite frankly, I write stories because it’s fun.

I don’t agree with the term “Aspiring Writer”, because as soon as you put a story idea down on paper, you are one. The End of Everything was the story that made me an author, but I’d been a writer long before then, even if those stories were terrible. Do I regret them? Absolutely not. They made me into the writer I am today. I practised world building, character arcs — heck, even villain developments (the original Mason was very different to the current one). Besides, how can you regret something you took immense enjoyment from?

So, when did I become a writer?

Well, I’ve always been a writer. Even before I learnt to write.