Has writing fiction always been the end goal for you?

Here is my answer to an interview question “Has writing fiction always been the end goal for you?”

Answer:

For a very long time I never saw myself as ever writing fiction. I was trained as a journalist. I’ve done TV, radio, online, print and photography. Fiction was something I like to read but never really thought of writing.

Not to say I never dabbled in fiction. When I was in uni, I wrote a short story and sent it to a creative writing professor. He said it had potential. But I never did anything with it.

Then years later, I had a daughter and went on maternity leave. I started to think of all the stories my mother told us as kids. We couldn’t afford books that much so Mama would make up stories for us. I wanted to preserve those stories and so I decided to write a children’s picture book and self publish it.

I guess the bug kinda bit me cause couldn’t stop thinking about these stories I wanted to write. It’s like something clicked in my head and I couldn’t stop. The Girl Between Two Worlds is my first ever novel – I mean it’s the first one I ever wrote in the novel department. It took around five years to get off the ground. It went through so many changes because I was learning in every single draft.

Even now, with the book being published, I still have a lot to learn about the industry. But I never thought I would end up here, and enjoy it immensely.