LOUISE WELSH
Reading Made Me into a Writer
Reading made me into a writer. My family were always on the move. I didn’t have many books, but wherever we were we would visit the public library twice a week. Which was fortunate, because moving so much I didn’t have many friends either. Being an egoist I always put myself at the centre of the novel. I wanted to be the adventurer, the one telling the story, the author. Writers win, even when they lose, they tell the tale.
When I was fourteen I was involved in an accident. Recovery involved lying motionless for three months. I was miserable, humiliated, lonely. Once more books were a refuge. I started to write - bundles of poems. I hope someone incinerated them along with my casts.
After that there was no writing for a long time. I opened a second hand book shop and kept on reading. Then, in my late twenties, I got itchy fingers. I began to meet other writers and for the first time started to think of myself in that way, not just a reader but a writer. Eventually, I wrote a novel and someone agreed to publish it.
Of course I’d rather be a movie star, but next to cinema, books are the best thing.
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