When I walked into two central London bookshops on Thursday morning to discover that they had ordered several copies of my book, it was an extraordinary feeling. Writing a book is a unique experience: I had no idea what I was letting myself in for when I started. It is intense, gruelling, in my case sometimes distressing, and really quite lonely. It can seem unending and it is difficult to think that thousands of hours of work will ever result in something that strangers can buy online and in shops.
