On fear.

I've told you all already that I'm writing a book. I don't mean to go on about it, but it takes up so much head space I can't help it. Plus, somehow, in admitting it here, I am taking those first baby steps towards hoping that in writing a book I may one day be able to call myself a writer. Like in the boxes where I currently write 'unemployed' or, recently, 'homemaker' (which is a bit of a joke but they didn't have unemployed as an option), I might one day be able to honestly and unpretentiously put 'writer. Maybe.

I'm scared. Of rejection, yes, but right now I'm scared of what must come before rejection. I'm scared to believe in myself, to allow myself to hope. I'm scared to let other people see me hoping, in case they see me as some poor delusional reject like the ones they exploit on American idol.

Let me take you back fourteen years or so. Which makes me approximately thirteen. I had bushy short hair, acne and braces. I had to wear a blazer and tie to school. By this point I'd figured out that wearing my tie short and my shirt untucked just made me look more ridiculous than I already did so instead I wore them properly and, in doing so, conformed myself nicely to the geek stereotype. I hated school. I wasn't bullied, not really, but I felt stifled there. The uniform, the compulsory maths lessons, the unavoidable social cliques.

I wanted desperately to stand out and be different, to be exceptional in something. In my eyes, my only real talent was playing the piano. So I practiced. Three - four hours a night of playing. Obsessive playing so that one wrong note would send me back to the beginning again. Even today my little sister can't hear those pieces without crying out in despair. I decided I wanted to be a concert pianist. Never mind that I had acute performance anxiety - that my entire body shook when I played in front of anyone - I wanted to be brilliant. So I came up with a plan to audition at England's best music school, which conveniently happened to be a few miles down the road.

My parents took me to look around. The school is old and rich. Parts of Harry Potter were filmed at it. It smells of stone and had long corridors with doors behind which budding musicians played. I spoke to the headmaster and let my eyes sparkle when I talked about playing piano. We scheduled an audition.


My piano teacher came first thing every morning for a fortnight and I practiced before school. Finally the day came and I went and played my pieces. I played well, with feeling, a few wrong notes but that's not surprising given how nervous I was.

I wasn't good enough.

I had chosen the wrong pieces, I had poor technique, did I not realise that only the top 1% of musicians are good enough for this school?

To this day I cannot remember crying more bitter tears, cannot remember ever again feeling quite so crushed. I still played after that but less and less. My performance anxiety got worse so I stopped accompanying the school choir, stopped practicing as hard or as often, stopped learning new pieces.

It is this that I think of when I start to tell people I want to be a writer. It is that feeling that I remember and that fear I have to overcome.