So, here’s the thing. The first few words debut bloggers cautiously tap out on their keyboards always have that edge of apprehensiveness. There’s an almost tangible question hanging in the air saying
“Am I a crazy fool for blogging about my thoughts and other nonsensicalness when I know nobody is reading this yet?”
“Furthermore, do said musings et al warrant people’s interest?”
“Everyone has something exciting happen to them at some stage in their life but is it enough to justify a blog?”
As a writer, you are told time and time again "Get yourself out there, start a blog, get on to Twitter" (ha! Already there!) but the first I’ve always hesitated at. Until of course the obvious became, well… obvious. A blog is not a diary. It’s true, people aren’t going to be interested in my 16-year-old self’s entries* which usually read along the lines of “Rick passed me on the way home from football practice. He smiled and said ‘Hi there.’ I’m sure he doesn’t have to go home that way and he did go out of his way to speak to me…”. Needless to say, Rick did apparently have to go home that way and possibly the fact that I all but engineered our every meeting, meant Rick never did feel the way this starry-eyed love-struck teenager hoped. Sucker.
A blog isn’t a day-by-day account of one’s life. Unless a blogger jets around the world, flits between death-defying circus acts whilst working on NASA’s budget space-liner to the moon and part-times as Tom Cruise’s psychiatrist (yeah, I know he won’t get one), one isn’t going to be blogging every day. Sometimes weeks or months can go by without anything blogworthy happening. So here I am, willing to take a chance that something blogworthy will happen soon. Why? Because at round about this point in the history of humanity my life is beginning to take shape. It’s taken nearly 30 years but the dream that I’ve harboured for the majority of that time actually has a texture to it now. The texture is smooth, approximately 80gsm per sheet (of which I count 360), an off-white colour with a black chemical splattered over it and is otherwise known as the manuscript of my first book, the horse-racing romance, At Long Odds.
To cut a long story short, I went through the same rigmarole as every other aspiring author, learning the craft, redrafting, editing, getting countless rejections and eventually disposing of the manuscript in the bottom drawer labelled “Learning Curve”. Then out of the blue last December, I received a phone call from a hugely-excited agent wanting to represent me. Did I act calm, think things through rationally and keep my blooming career as a novelist a surprise to my family? No. I shrieked “Yes please!” to the agent, agreed to do everything she asked (in my defence and to her credit, everything she asked to be changed in the book were valid improvements) and before the light on the screen of my mobile had had a chance to fade, I was dialling my mother’s number at work, screaming “My book’s gonna be published! I’m gonna be the next Jilly Cooper!” The latter comment wasn’t met with as much glee as the first (don't worry Mum, I won't force you to read the sex scenes) but each to their own.
Now, my agent (every time I say that, a warm feeling swells inside me - it does have a certain ring to it) and I are awaiting decisions from various publishers. This time, I’m determined to keep any good news a secret from my mum until I have that lovely freshly-printed and bound copy of At Long Odds in my hands. Yes, this time I am determined. Just watch me.
* This statement excludes my elder brother, Daniel. When you told the parents what I’d written in my diary and subsequently got me grounded for close to a year, your excuse of ‘It was in your best interests’ still does not pass muster with me, even fourteen years on.
