Postscript

I've just stumbled across my tribe. I didn't know that it even existed, and when I arrived at a big old manor house, deep in the Southampton countryside on Friday for a NAWE annual conference on creative writing in education, it certainly wasn't what I expected to find. But there were hundreds of them, all writing, all teaching, all sharing ideas about how to build a sustainable career as a writer.

The huge majority were poets, novelists, experts in the short story or flash fiction, and part of what Academia calls a 'community of practice' to which I had never felt I belonged. But after two days of scribbling ideas to use with my own students as well as my own practice, swapping stories at the bar and spotting some serious talent to invite to The Sussex House Party, I'm changing my badge. If my identity as a writer has always been defined by not belonging to the communities that I longed to be invited into, I'm treating myself to a makeover. I might not even have noticed the opportunity if one of the delegates hadn't asked me what on earth I was doing here if I wasn't a proper writer. Ok, so that wasn't quite what she said. But it is what she meant; non fiction isn't proper. And for the first time, I absolutely knew that she was wrong.

From here, the family tree stretches deep and wide, inspiring, sharing, connecting, retreating. It feels like one of the episodes in "Survivors" when all those who didn't get the fatal lurghi begin to emerge into the sunlight. Or maybe it's just me who's emerging; maybe they've been basking in the warmth all this time. I just hope they haven't got knives hidden in their poetry books.