Are you listening in the back? I have a small announcement to make.

*takes deep breath*

I’m going to write a book.

There. I’ve said it. It’s out there. I can’t take it back now.

You have no idea how good it feels to say that. And, simultaneously, how utterly, curl-up-in-the-foetal-position terrified it makes me.

Long story short, I have wanted to write a book for years. I made a couple of abortive attempts about 12 years ago: one a chick-fic novel that got about as far as a title (E-Male) and three half-written chapters, the other a factual sports-based book that went under the working name 100 Sporting Years, 100 Defining Moments which was abandoned after I had written about a dozen out of the 100 chapters. To say I was struggling to define my writing voice is a bit like saying a bored toddler left alone with a vat of spaghetti bolognaise might get a bit messy.

I’ve never been much good at finishing thi …

Now, however, I’m older, wiser, slightly more deluded and feel better qualified to try again. After all, I have just spectacularly failed to get myself shortlisted for the Best Writer Award at both the BiBs (BritMums) and the MADs (Tots100), so who wouldn’t be confident in their writing ability after that? Er.

So why am I committing to this in such a public way? The simple fact is that I’ve been umming and ahhing about trying again for a couple of years now, to the point where my wife has learned to tune me out whenever I start to bring the subject up for the 916th time. I can’t say I blame her, to be honest.

Hence my promise to you, dear reader. I know from experience the best way to get myself to commit to something is to say I will do it to someone else. I hate disappointing other people. And now I have committed to not disappointing you.

I don’t know how long it will take me. I don’t yet know how I am going to publish (or, more likely, self-publish) it. (If anyone has any tips on that front, now would be a good time to comment.) But I do know that I am far more likely to go through with it now that I have put a statement in writing.

I even have a title for the book – no, I’m not going to reveal it, even if you tickle me with a feather – and a working outline. Suffice to say it’s about my experiences of being a dad. So now it’s just a case of putting finger to keyboard – and probably, repeatedly, head to brick wall – and waiting for the magic to flow. Yeah, I know, I’m in big trouble now.

It’s my intention to chronicle my journey from Zero to Fifty Shades of Dad (no, that’s not the title) in its own section on the blog, which I’m hoping will be interesting to anyone else with aspirations of producing a book. It may also be stultifyingly dull. We’ll see.

They say that everybody has a book inside them waiting to be written. I guess I’m about to find out whether or not that’s true. It’s time to write a new chapter in the story of my life.

Gulp. Wish me luck.

If you liked this post, why not follow me on the following social networks?