What You See Is What You Get

ROSEMARY BIOGRAPHY

When I was about five I had a dolls' cot. I used to roll it over, make it into a desk and spend hours in my own world, writing away. I must have only just learnt how to hold a pencil and I haven't a clue what I wrote. But what I remember vividly is that sense of being absorbed, miles away from my brothers roaring about and my parents fussing and whatever else was going on.

When I was nine I was sent to an all-girls school in Belfast where we lived. It was a strange place. We had elocution lessons, to try and make us talk posh, and got prizes for deportment (which means standing up straight) and for embroidery. At break time one of the favourite games was to pretend to be horses doing show-jumping. My friend and I used to crash straight through their show-jumping courses knocking down all the jumps.

We thought that was great fun, until my parents were summoned to see the head teacher. Several times. My parents used to fight a lot and it felt as if the only thing they agreed on was that I was trouble.

Then when I was 12, we moved from Belfast up to Portstewart on the north coast of Northern Ireland. From our new house we could see the beach and Donegal. After school we used to swim in rock pools or in the surf. It was always freezing, even in September. And I went to Coleraine High School where for the first time I came up against some seriously clever girls. I remember dissolving in tears in the chemistry lab because I couldn't keep up and everything felt so strange and horrible. But I stuck it out and made some of the best friends of my life. I didn't waste my time ruining other people's games this time either. My parents were still fighting a lot so to keep out of the way I did my homework very thoroughly, and got to Cambridge university.

By the age of nine or ten, I knew that I loved writing stories but it took me a while to get around to it. A French writer called Marcel Proust took decades to get around to writing too. In fact he didn't even start his most famous work until after his parents were dead. He was sitting in a café once when he was asked about himself. He said (en francais presumably): 'I am the greatest author the world has ever known.' 'What have you written, M'sieur?' he was asked. Marcel replied: 'Nothing. Yet.'

I know that feeling. For years I was a law student, then a lawyer, then a publisher trying to persuade lawyers to write long, tedious books for each other. I wanted to write about ghosts and lovers and spells and adventures, but when I sat down to try, it all came out wrong. Then my children were born, and the stories came too.

To make money while my children were small, I became a journalist. Journalism is fantastic training for a writer. It teaches you to get down to your writing, to keep it short and to be clear what you're saying. If you're a nosey person, journalism is fantastic; people tell you the most extraordinary things if they think it'll get them in the papers. Some of it might even be true. Gradually I wrote more and more fiction, just for practice, and in 1996/7 I began to amalgamate some of my stories into one big one. It became What You See Is What You Get.