A proper writing project

I'm glad lovely Lady P ran a little behind schedule. Not least because it gave her longer to fatten up, and me longer to rest.

But also because by being late, she allowed me to make a meeting, optimistically scheduled for 3 days after her due date - with my new literary agent. That's right, an actual agent. Mine! 'My agent': I love saying that. And I love my unborn child for hanging in there so I could meet the agent properly and kick start discussions about a real, proper, book project.

Two years ago, when I started blogging, it was as a means to an end. I had the idea that writing something, however frivolous and slimline, every few days, would be a good habit to get into. Spending that time at my keyboard would inevitably lead me to get my teeth into a 'proper' writing project - like a modern classic novel, or an incisive, moving, critically acclaimed and commercially successful short story collection. Or a fought-over, massively bankable screenplay. (Always good to set your sights high, right?)

What happened instead is that I enjoyed blogging so much I didn't have much time or energy left for other writing. The blog quickly became an end in itself, and a very satisfying one, at that. Dreams of making a career out of writing faded, against the bright reality of a well paid Big Corp job and the fun of writing for myself, in my spare time.

I guess the lure of the 'proper writing project' was always going to reel me back in. So in recent months my glamorous e-entrepreneurial friend and I have been working on a book. As we embarked on a quest for an agent I decided to raise my social media profile - hence my increased volume of tweets, Instagrams, Pinterests and Facebook posts. I won't say anymore about the book until we have a publisher and it is really real. But I can at least tell you it is bloody brilliant.

I don't know whether it's all the writing practice my blog gave me, my social media bleatings, or just sheer good luck, but we have managed to find a lovely, clever agent to represent us. Now all we need is a publisher... watch this space!