I have a friend called Sprinkles who is fond of saying that success happens when opportunity meets preparation. And the truth of that was shown again this morning. Was pleased to find that one of my essays had been taken by a very small literary magazine. They wrote to me saying that they needed something non-fictional… I just reached into my store room of prepared essays and sent them a couple, and pow!

I’m not one who always believes you have to have a clear opportunity for publication before you set pen to paper. The thing about writers, as someone much bigger and cleverer than me said, is that they write. Sometimes you don’t know why you are writing something, or what the outcome will be. But you have to trust yourself. After all what else is there to do?

Or as PG Wodehouse put it: “I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that . . . just loafed, I suppose.”