TOM HARDY

I spend more time with fictional people than I do real ones. Given some of the people I’ve come across, this is not entirely a bad thing.

            Even when not writing I have relationships with both imaginary people and people I feel I know because I’ve seen them on the telly. They pop up in my dreams. Tom Hardy pops up often, OBVS.

            If I ever met these people in real life it would be really embarrassing – like calling a teacher ‘mum’.

            I fantasise about my books getting TV or film deals and then I would meet Mr Hardy and we would discuss his motivation (mine would be obvious) and we would become BEST FRIENDS.

            Which brings me to the magical power of fantasies.

            Imagining I’d have a novel published, when all the evidence was against it, helped me slog through years (YEARS I say!) of grinding doubt and hours in front of a computer screen deleting paragraphs I’d obsessed over for even more hours.

            Imagining I’d see my book in the window of Waterstones Crouch End kept me going – a shop that opened as I was doing my MA in Creative Writing, AN ACTUAL SIGN! Every time I passed the window, I’d sing a little song, ‘This is my window, this is my window, this is where my book will be…’ I have a mug with a picture of the Waterstones window on it. And the words to my song. (I bet The Secret doesn’t tell you to get a mug and a song.)

            Imagining I could write at all dragged me ONWARDS. People like me don’t get to write. Some of my relatives never learned. I felt writing wasn’t ‘a proper job’. Even when I earnt a living as a journalist, I didn’t feel I was a ‘proper writer’. When I took the plunge to go back to University to write my novel, it was crushing. After two years and thousands of pounds, juggling full time work with lectures, tutorials and writing assignments, I finally finished the novel on my MA course, only to find one of the most positive comments was, ‘Hardly any typos.’ I wanted to curl up and die.

But I kept at it thanks to the power of fantasising I WOULD BECOME A PROPER WRITER.

I honoured that fantasy when I turned down a deal with an e-publisher, because I yearned for a physical book in my hand, even though I had no other offers at the time.

And somehow, eventually, the luck followed the hard work and the sending off my writing to agents and agents sending it off to publishers and FINALLY IT HAPPENED TO ME!

So, who knows, one day I will meet Tom Hardy and tell him how he’s kept me going. And when they drag me away from him and the restraining order is applied, I will move on to imagining something else.