So am I a writer yet?

I've loved writing and the written word ever since my school days. I enjoy crafting stories, essays, long exam questions, proposals and all kinds of marketing material – anything with words. Yes, really, I love it! I find it absorbing to develop documents in different styles, to meet diverse client expectations and address varied audiences.

I've recently begun to get more seriously into writing fiction and I would say this is my ambition – to become known as a novelist. It is early days, so I'm not going anywhere just yet. I’m around 25,000 words into my writing project, which I'm just about ready to start calling 'my novel'. I've written a small handful of short stories and I'm in the process of adding to this very small portfolio so I can have something suitable to enter into one or two writing competitions over coming months.

When you’re starting out as a writer, there is a wealth of advice available to you. One thing you're always hearing is 'just do it'. It's obvious, but it's also surprisingly hard to 'just do it'. You don't yet see yourself as a writer and almost everything you try to write feels somehow pretentious and in a strange way, impudent. I remember starting out as a salesperson in the technology world and feeling like an imposter, and that feeling has returned lately as I exercise my fiction writing muscles and get used to the words 'my novel'.

But I know how fortunate I am, as I’ve been earning my living from writing for years, which is more than many budding novelists can say. So my challenge of late is to balance the needs of my present and very satisfying employ – putting other people's words into well crafted professional documents to present a positive brand image to their customers – with the excitement I feel about spending time creating fiction – and a world populated by people given life through my own simple imagination.

11th Sept 2010