Why I Almost Gave Up Writing—AKA a 12-year Hiatus.

It’s the last week of the blog hop with Viviana MacKade. I’ve loved it and I may even try one of my own soon. It’s earned me some extra visitors to my site and I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a bit more about me, despite the poor sharing skills I mentioned last week.

This week, Viviana asked: What made you almost give up (your thing)?

Now, I don’t know whether I can say I gave up fiction writing. Can you call a 12-year hiatus almost giving up? Because that’s really what it was.

Here’s the story:

Like most students, I left university with a degree and plenty of debt. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my history degree, but becoming a fiction writer had been a niggling urge since my teenage years when I would make up stories in my head. Now, I would classify it as fan fiction, based on books I read or films I watched.  

I didn’t think I had the nerve or the talent to become a fiction writer. With the debt also hanging over my head, plus I had to pay my way in the world, I got a job in marketing and communications. (After an initial year working in a call centre, which was hell on earth, except I met my husband while working there.)

So, I used my research and writing skills while at work, and tried to squeeze in writing a bit of fiction when I could. In reality, this meant years of inconsistent writing—starting a project, not finishing it, starting another… you get the idea.

Five years later, I had plenty of content writing experience under my belt, but not one completed fiction manuscript. The world of marketing was getting to me. I wasn’t happy and thought about going back to university to do a master’s degree, except… a baby arrived. I gave up work and my writing and became a stay-at-home parent (my second child arrived three years later).

Only when my kids started pre-school, did I venture back into the world of work. I started on the pre-school committee (in the UK many pre-schools are charities run by parent volunteers). The pre-school grew and could no longer function as a charity, so I and a colleague set it up as a non-profit company and became directors. I spent 12 years in that role, serving the little people of our community, and I enjoyed it.

What I didn’t mention was that as my children grew and became less dependent on me, that nagging feeling to get back to fiction writing returned. I knew if I wanted to make a proper go of it, I couldn’t just do a bit here and there. I need a plan and a schedule. So, in 2018, I started getting up at 5 am to make sure I did at least two hours of writing every weekday before I went to work.

In 2019, I had two completed manuscripts and two more planned for my historical romance series and I started pitching. That was when I finally felt like a proper fiction writer. I scheduled my writing time and stuck to it. Now I have 6 manuscripts under my belt in various stages of editing, a four-book publishing contract with Scarsdale Publishing for my first historical romance series, and—as I mentioned last week—a short story for an anthology out this summer.

As things took off with my writing, I had to leave pre-school education. I’ve been doing weekend work for my local library service for the past year but the money issues crept in again with the cost-of-living crisis. My weekly hours were just not enough to help support my family, but I’m pleased to say I have found part-time work as a content writer again, and I start next month.

I feel like I’ve got the best of both worlds at the moment. I get to write safeguarding content for education settings (combining my experience in pre-school education and my writing skills), plus time to write my fiction. I hope the two different writing styles will round out my skills and help me become a better writer.

I doubt I will ever earn enough to become a full-time fiction writer, which is the reality of most writers these days. But, I now class myself as a professional writer, and I tell people what I do when they ask! That was an enormous step for me.

Part of me wishes I could go back 20 years and tell myself to forget the debt or be organised and write every day, but… if I changed some things, I wouldn’t have met my husband or had my wonderful family.

Would I have ventured into a different genre back then (I have a hankering to write a sci-fi adventure)? Would I have already become a full-time fiction writer if I’d made a proper go of it earlier? We’ll never know.

Is there anything you almost gave up, but you’re glad you didn’t? Leave a comment and check out the posts from the other blog hop authors.