I’m a professional writer

I’m now a professional writer! In a way.

The local authority where I worked went through yet another restructure in December 2015 and this time I was a casualty – my job was made redundant and I became gainlessly unemployed early in 2016.

I didn’t stay unemployed for long. I worked for a teacher supply agency for a while which was fine, but the work was just not regular enough. I then did social research interviewing which was fascinating, especially the cognitive testing of children, but had the potential to get pretty boring pretty quickly.  I also volunteered for one evening a week at a Young Carers club, partly to keep ‘in the loop’ with youth work.

Meanwhile I was applying for other jobs and applied for one with the charity that runs the Young Carer youth club. I didn’t get the job I applied for (although I was shortlisted and interviewed) but the CEO later phoned me and suggested we meet for coffee as he had an idea.

Free coffee was the clincher. I agreed to meet him for coffee in a town half way between their head office and my home town. Over Starbucks he offered me the job of Funding Manager – in short, making relationships with grant giving organisations, writing funding and tender bids, overseeing the monitoring reports and all associated tasks. He saw ‘something’ in my application form and liked that I had a Plain English diploma.

I accepted with trepidation; I had never written a serious funding bid. We shook hands over our coffee cups and voila! I had a new job. I still have that job and I love it. Words about outcomes and benefits flow onto my screen and I’m getting paid to write them! That makes me a professional writer, yes?