This story marked a turning point in my life, although I didn't know that at the time of writing. So often, we don't realise that something important is just that until much, much later.
A dear friend, whose portfolio career includes working for The Frogmore Press, was putting together an anthology of poetry and prose called 'Languages of Colour'. She asked me if I had anything to contribute. I said I'd have a think, and promptly forgot all about it. Some months later, she asked me again. Inspired by interesting conversations at parties and at work in the Teacher's Room and ideas that had been fermenting for some time, I wrote this story. It was accepted, and an excerpt was published in the Frogmore Press edition named 'Languages of Colour'. I have highlighted this section in bold.
At around the same time, I was unhappy at work, and was whingeing to some friends of mine about my malcontent. One of them, a former teacher, was working for an educational publishing company, and offered to put my CV forward to a few departments who were looking for authors. A couple of editors took an interest in my application, and I was offered some professional writing work.
Both pieces were published at around the same time, in early summer 2012. I could not stop preening. I had one piece of writing published in a beautiful literary journal. The other was a series of worksheets to teach conversational English to apprentice hairdressers. You may scoff at the latter, dear reader. You wouldn't be the first. But here's the thing - of those two pieces of writing, for one I was paid 1000€, and for the other I was paid nothing (and was reminded by various wannabe writers of my acquaintance how lucky I was that I hadn't had to pay anything to be included). Guess which one was which? Guess why I ended up working as a professional rather than a literary writer for so many years?
I often tell this anecdote about how I got started as a writer, but what I tend to overlook is the gratitude I have for the friends who gave me the first lucky breaks. Thank you, Alexandra and Christiane, for believing in me.
Thank you to all my colleagues at Cornelsen and Veritas who had to put up with me for three years, and on occasion still do. I am truly sorry for every missed deadline, all the dramas, for every piece of copy I turned in that I hadn't bothered to proofread, and for all the tiny things I did that made your lives irritating. Thank you to the lovely people I met through this work who have supported me as a writer. Thank you to my editor Merlene who, after I had got every (and I mean every) aspect of a project wrong, still gave me one of the best pieces of encouragement I have ever had, when she said, 'Never doubt yourself as a writer'.
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