'How is it that I became a writer?'

In Negotiating with the Dead,  Margaret Atwood describes the writer inside us by way of a metaphor; the motivation to write is an 'insistent camel' that propels a writer's 'writing life' forward - stubbornly, in search of water or, better still, an oasis of sympathetic editors and enthusiastic publishers... 


Is that how I became a writer? By virtue of a dogged determination to reach the end of a predestined journey towards creative fulfilment? 


Erm, no. 


The truth, as is usually the case, is more prosaic than that. At school I was quiet and studious. I did well in all subjects until (shock horror!) a certain amount of dedication, effort and hard work was required. At this point, and pretty much overnight, I became useless at almost everything: PE - all the gear and no idea; Science - couldn't make head nor tail of the gear and, consequently, even less idea; Languages - resolutely unable to get beyond telling someone my age and asking how to get to the train station; Maths - ???????? 


And so it was that I discovered that entertaining people and telling stories was SO much easier than figuring out the solution to a quadratic equation... And it was that, coupled with the fact that I could be good at English without having to try too hard (well, there was that blip at A Level when I had to explain to my mum that the A I got was for 'Absent' but we won't dwell on that...) that led me to writing. 


Yes - it was being a lazy show off with a short attention span and a predilection for a finely honed sentence that ensured I would fail to excel in anything until fate led me to writing where I could use those traits to their best effect. Not, perhaps, the stuff that inspiring biographies are made of but, nevertheless, the truth. 


So, mes etudiants, this is my truth, tell me yours.*


*To paraphrase the Manic Street Preachers and throw in a bit of French. Proof, were it needed, that I am, indeed, a lazy show off...