Today I was asked how I finished my book...

Unfortunately I had to swallow the bitter pill of reality and admit that my book is far from finished. There is a horrifyingly scary amount to do before I'll run the agent, editor and publisher guantlet! Even then I have to expect them to say it is not finished.

BUT I can tell you about how I got from a blank piece of paper to a first draft.

The truth is this... I can't remember the moment when the light bulb 'dinged' above my head, or I started imagining characters in my head (never talking to them though, I hear this is a bad sign?) but the whole novel was actually born from an entirely different idea. It certainly didn't 'ding' into my life. I suspect it was more like a six hour shift at the library, with the beginning of an idea ruminating until I decided I had to do something with it.

Now I do remember the day I decided to do something with it. I sat down and decided that I wanted to write in the first person and that for this idea my main character would be a boy. Then after a page I scrapped it all and thought 'No I don't want the main character to be a boy, I want it to be a girl'. Again and again I scrapped the first page and chuckled to myself about my silly fantasy of thinking that I could just sit down and write. Who did I think I was, J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins or Stephanie Meyer?

My housemate peered into my room and asked what I was doing so I launched into a 'Don't you think it's a good idea' speech about my new idea. We got excited and thought it'd be a great film, obviously someone would want to pick up the rights, right?

Oh the naivety! The idea changed DRASTICALLY from that afternoon but the useful thing for me was talking t through with somebody and getting excited about them saying 'Yes, it is a good idea'. As soon as you hear that, it gets a teensy bit easier. For a while I wrote down notes that I wanted to happen and they always referred to the main character as 'Girl'. I couldn't write from the character's p.o.v before I even knew her and I couldn't just sit down and think 'It's Tuesday afternoon and I have nothing to do so I am going to write',

Then, on a three hour train ride I found my character and I found her voice just by sitting and thinking about the story. She stemmed from a 'what if' question.

I'm not saying it hasn't been done before, because it has, but 'What if she woke up and didn't know who she was, where she was or why she was there?' Then the name just came to me. Caro.

So after months of stewing, I had her name and I had her 'What if' and realised that I'd got to the point where I just HAD to start writing. As soon as I had that it snowballed and I wrote solidly for the whole three hour train journey. I didn't scrap a single thing (I have now, but lets scoot past that and revel in the moment!).

For months the idea swam around amongst my final uni project and my dissertation and I occasionally wrote but it was more about getting to know them in my head (wow when I talk about them in my head it does sound like I'm heading into the crazy) and creating the world WHICH is the hardest thing. (When you read a book and don't even question the complex and creative construct of the world you're reading about, please stop and think about how awesome that is.)

When out of uni, as I've said before, work was scarce and I found myself with way too much spare time on my hands.

Too much spare time = lots of thinking time.

Lots of thinking time = (for me) over thinking the depressing lack of work, money and social life.

So instead my lots of thinking time became my writing time. My boyfriend, quite possibly fed up of my down time that came from lots of thinking, said that I should be like a proper writer, that I should treat it as a job.

And I did.

I wrote everyday.

There are many, many documents and guides that I probably should have read during the writing process, but I didn't and I still finished. That is because I didn't stop. Of course, now I have to go through and use the knowledge of all these fantastic writing guides to edit and to help shape my ideas.

There are loads of different pieces of advice, but for me the key was...

Write. Keep at it and just write.