You Let Me In

by Lucy Clarke

I snap the picture, then upload it to Facebook, adding the caption: After a lovely fortnight tutoring on a writing retreat, I’m back home and SO excited to be diving into my novel – on the home straight now! #amwriting #authorlife Then I put the props away.

something that is important to me is writing down my early ideas by hand. There is something about the germ of an idea, when it feels too precious, too delicate to be tapped into a computer screen and locked there. I like the curve of words on the page, a lack of uniformity, the scratch of a pencil on cream paper. The ideas can flow and find their rhythm.’

wonder where life would have taken me if I’d been believed. If I’d believed in myself. Would I have stayed at university, completed my degree?