First things first
At the age of nine or so, I wanted to be a writer. I was a wannabe writer. I was captivated by the story of Daisy Ashford, who at nine years old wrote a novel The Young Visiters [so spelt] which was later published to great acclaim. I loved the idea of one’s own book, with its cover inscribed with the title and one’s name, all those pages inside, the smell of paper and glue, the ingenious story, the engaging characters. And of course, I tried doing it. The attempts were mostly imitative of what I had just read: so it was Daisy Ashford to start with, then in teenage years, Evelyn Waugh and J. R. R. Tolkien. The results were not terribly inspired and sometimes downright embarrassing. And I did not go on from there to be a proper writer. I did not morph into the desired state. Wanting to be a writer did not make me a writer. Learning the craft of writing (in so far as I have learnt it) came as a necessity. At school, and university, one could only study an arts subject by writing e...