What kind of person becomes a successful writer?

Londoner, Diane Setterfield, is said to have had breathtaking success in 2006 with her first novel “The Thirteenth Tale”.

In an interview with Diana Dekker (The Dominion Post “Your Weekend”, August 9, 2014) Setterfield said that she used to think “you had to be quite an extraordinary person to be a writer.”

Then, unhappy in her job, she decided to give it a go and began writing fiction, she says, on the strength of a “one week writing course, reading” and her past experience “translating the most amazing English and French literature”.

Maybe her wider life experiences also helped. It was American author, Henry David Thoreau (d.1862), who said, “How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.”

If he was still alive, I wonder what he would have thought of all the young indie authors bravely writing fiction today.

Setterfield, at 49, has likely done some living. She may also be an extraordinary person, though too modest to admit it.

Minimal academic training also characterised the start of my fiction writing. My career experience did, however, involve writing non-fiction over many years. The hardest part, in transitioning to writing fiction, was changing my style from impersonal business-speak as a public administrator to less passive story telling as a novelist. It’s been quite a demanding victory.

I am not experiencing “breathtaking success” though, even with many years behind me. I can most kindly sum up my level of achievement along the lines: “Isn’t it nice that some people are reading my books and enjoying them?”

You might say that, with many peers, I occupy a boutique writing niche.