STORIES

I wrote my first novel when I was in the sixth form. Guess what it was about? The next one was a thriller set in Norway, a country I had never visited and whose language and customs I knew nothing of. One early beta reader asked me why there wasn’t any snow on the ground. So I abandoned writing novels and started writing short stories instead, thinking they would be simpler. Well, they certainly didn’t take as long, and you sure didn’t need so much plot. Doddle, I thought. Then we started doing Maupassant for French A level, and I came across F Scott Fitzgerald. His Pat Hobby stories became a particular favourite (until I read The Great Gatsby, of course, still the best novel I’ve ever read), so I resolved to hone my craft. An inconvenient ingrown toenail had robbed me of my final chance to play school football on Thursday afternoons anyway, so I spent that time in the common room instead, scribbling away, sublimating my frustration. I wrote something like twenty short stories between the ages of seventeen and eighteen. Guess what they were about? I like to think I got better…