the writing ladder

When I decided I wanted to write, at about the age of four, I had all kinds of stories going around in my head. As I grew older, as opposed to wiser, I took up various careers - none had anything to do with writing. They ranged from college, hairdressing, office work, bar work, tenants association chairperson, office work, hairdressing -again! Nothing to do with writing at all. But still the stories kept on floating into my head. I raised my kids and through the ups and downs the bloody stories would not go away so I took myself to the library, not knowing how you go about writing a best-seller whilst waiting for the kettle to boil - and got a few books on the subject of writing a bestseller!

Whilst I was there I saw a poster advertising a writers workshop on a Wednesday night at the local high-school - it wasn't a 'how-to-write-a-bestseller-type-class' - but a nice little workshop where you could go and swap ideas and read your short stories out loud (hell no!) But I decided I would give it a try. I knew what I liked to read, I was the proud keeper of a nice big thesaurus and I could string a sentance ot two together when the need arose - so best sellerdom here I come!

That first meeting was a Wet Wednesday evening in October, just as the nights are drawing in and you put your feet up to watch 'Corrie'. I was sitting alone in a classroom soaked to the skin, shivering. Clutching a small hardbacked notebook containing a few short stories, the outline of a novel I intended to write, and a list of decorating materials alongside a sketch of the new kitchen I'd always dreamed of slaving in, I wondered where everybody else was.

I thought that, maybe, I had mis-read the poster and that I had come on the wrong night when a small, freckled man with a ginger comb-over sauntered into the room. I smiled. Maybe he was the teacher as he sat at the teacher's desk. He did not recipricate the smile. Then the room began to come to life as a group of chattering people of various shapes sizes and ages entered the room.

A woman with a cardboard box filled with files and folders stood by the desk and reminded me of when I was at school preparing to be scolded for some mild misdemeanor. She was the 'tutor' for want of a better title, and the freckled man turned out to be a newbie too - a rather haughty one- I later discovered when he declared that he never read anybody Else's work as he was far too busy writing stuff, and his own imagination was enough for him to make it as a great writer. I thought Yeah! If only it was that easy.

I left my little notebook with Anne, the tutor, a lovely woman whose plays had been performed on national radio and wrote short stories for women's magazines and had wild springy dark hair - I was in the presence of greatness no less! I wondered if she pinched every bodies ideas and wrote everything that we uttered! How conceited was I ? To think anybody would be interested in my pearls of naivety.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed my two hours at the workshop -him indoors irritatingly called it the 'night-class' -and at nine o clock it finished. I had discovered that there were all kinds of stuff to do with writing that I never even dreamt of, I found out what a 'genre' was even though I'd never heard the word before, it was bandied about with reckless oblivion and sooner or later, unless you were a plank, you got the gist. I nodded in what I hoped were all the right places; I didn't want to come over as a complete philistine -another word I learned that night, and as we reached the denouement (another) of the evening I was asked to read a little of my work.

I froze like the ice cube that sank the Titanic! But Anne very kindly read for me saying that it was perfectly natural to be nervous on your first night - I never, ever read my own work in the two years I attended - I think I got off with it by complimenting Anne on her truly wonderful story-telling voice, and also by explaining that I could 'hear' my mistakes if somebody else read it out loud. Whatever. It worked.

If I ever do have a best-seller and need to do a public reading I will have to ring Anne and ask her to accompany me - because the stories don't sound half bad when she reads them.

Keep smiling, More Later.