I have a confession. When I first started writing what would eventually (after many, many iterations) become my first novel, Wild Ground, I had no idea what the ending would be. Yes, I had a starting point. Granted, I had a vague sense of where the story might go. But an ending? That seemed completely beyond my reach.
Perhaps you can tell already that I come from the school of the ‘pantsers’ (that slightly off-putting writerly term that refers to someone who ‘writes by the seat of their pants’). My stories don’t come to me fully formed, don’t drop into my head in what I have heard other authors describe as ‘a perfectly formed egg’ – if only! Maybe that’s what held me back from progressing with my bookish ambitions for so long. The need to know everything before I started anything ended up crippling my creativity.
What I think I have always had a firm hold on though, is my understanding of character. People fascinate me. Their intricacies, their complexities. How lived experience
