I left university with a good degree in English Literature, but no sense of what I wanted to do. Over the next six years, _ , just trying to earn an income. I tried journalism, but I didn't think I was any good, then finance, which I hated. Finally, I got a job as a rights assistant at a famous publisher. I loved working with books, although the job that I did was dull. I had enough savings to take a year off work, and I decided to try to satisfy a deep-down wish to write a novel. Attending a Novel Writing MA course gave me the structure I needed to write my first 55,000 words. It takes confidence to make a new start--there's a dark period in-between where you're neither one thing nor the other. You're out for dinner and people ask what you do, and you're too ashamed to say, "Well, I'm writing a novel, but I'm not quite sure if I'm going to get there." My confidence dived. Believing my novel could not be published, I put it aside. Then I met an agent  who said I should send my novel out to agents. So, I did and, to my surprise, got some wonderful feedback. I felt a little hope that I might actually become a published writer and, after signing with an agent, I finished the second half of the novel. The next problem was finding a publisher. After two-and-a-half years of no income, just waiting and wondering, a publisher offered me a book deal--that publisher turned out to be the one I once worked for. It feels like an unbelievable stroke of luck--of fate, really. When you set out to do something different, there's no end in sight, so to find myself in a position where I now have my own name on a contract of the publisher--to be a published writer--is unbelievably rewarding . How did the writer feel halfway with the novel?
Disturbed. Ashamed. Confident. Uncertain.