I gave my first talk to school children and this is how it went
They didn't boo me, so I might do it again
I was invited to give an author talk at a prize-giving ceremony for a secondary school in South London. Honestly, if I hadn’t of binge-watched Abbott Elementary the week before, I might have said no. What business do I have speaking to school children?! I don’t even write YA!
But I have always secretly harboured the thought that an alternative career in an alternative universe would be a secondary school English teacher. Sometimes I read books and file them away in my mind for the imaginary English syllabus I would teach, if I had the chance.
I didn’t have a great time at secondary school, but I’ve been told more than once by friends who teach that it’s people who didn’t enjoy school who make the best teachers. And they were both English teachers. And the teacher who invited me to speak at the prize-giving ceremony was also an English teacher.
And even though I’m pretty sure most of my teachers didn’t like me, my English teachers always gave me the space to be that other teachers didn’t. So, long story short: English teachers are the best.
Anyway, read the transcript of my speech below:
“In the spirit of honesty, I think I should say that I really didn’t like secondary school, so the fact that I’m here addressing you all is quite surreal and thank you for inviting me here to speak.
So yes, I didn’t like school, but one of the best things about school was the library. It was where I spent some lunchtimes, deciding on the stack of books I’d be taking home that day, buying weird stationary from the library shop and, of course, reading. When I was in secondary I loved reading anything by Jacqueline Wilson, the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison or the Adrian Mole diaries by Sue Townsend – which I’m not sure are actually for teenagers, but it was fun all the more.
My love for reading started when I was a child. I was the child who always got books as Christmas and birthday presents from my aunties and uncles. I don’t know if they got me books because I loved reading, or the fact that all I got was books forced me to love reading… It’s a chicken and egg situation, but the end result is that I was reading all the time.
I used to read at the most inconvenient times, while eating dinner… while on the toilet… I lost count of the amount of times I missed my bus stop or lost sight of my mum in public spaces because I was racing through the chapters of a book. Before The Illustrated Mum, Adrian Mole and Georgia Nicholson, my favourite books were The Secret Garden, The Railway Children and all the Enid Blyton books.
The children in these books had lives that looked nothing like mine, but that was partly why I enjoyed them. It felt like I was travelling in my seat, whether it was to an overgrown garden in the damp English countryside or a midnight feast in a boarding school. We didn’t go on many family holidays as a child, so this was the way my family introduced me to the world – and it was an adventure.
Inspired by The Secret Garden I started to write a book in primary school called The African Princess. It was about a girl who went to Nigeria on holiday and discovered that she was a princess. It was inspired by our first family holiday where I didn’t discover I was a princess, but still had a lot of fun. I didn’t finish that book and decided that maybe, writing novels wasn’t for me. Instead I turned my focus to writing poetry, drawing comic strips and writing the fanciest capital letters I could.
In secondary school, inspired by Georgia Nicholson and Adrian Mole, I started keeping a diary. It started as a way to process the friendship politics of being at an all-girls school and also a way to sort out my feelings in my head. I also wrote lists of all the albums I wanted to buy – back when we had to buy these things called CDs, ancient technology! – and my hopes and dreams.
So here is my teenage diary, I’m going to read an excerpt, but you’ll have to try not to cringe when you hear the slang we used to use.
Writing also got me in trouble in school, so I don’t recommend you steal blank exercise books from the supply cupboard and write cheeky stories and notes to friends in them, because – fun fact – all your private jokes become school property in those school-bought exercise books and then your teacher can read them out to your mum over the phone and it is really, really embarrassing.
But despite those hiccups, I’ve kept a diary until this very day and for me, reading and writing has always gone hand in hand. Reading all the amazing writers I love, like the legends, Toni Morrison and Jamaica Kincaid, and younger writers like Bolu Babalola and Caleb Femi, just makes me want to write even more. And whenever the path feels unclear, I’ve always written my way out of it, whether it is through keeping a diary to unjumble all of my confused thoughts, or even writing myself into a career.
Here’s a story: soon after I had my first baby, I was feeling really sad. I was depressed, but I didn’t know it at the time and all I could think to do was write. Big changes, like having a baby, changing schools, or even winning the lottery can cause a mixture of feelings, good and bad, and I started writing about what it was like to become a mum to sort through everything that I was feeling.
I wrote and wrote and put it on the internet. Just on my personal blog just to express myself. But people began reading my work and then asking me to write stuff for them. They began paying me as well. Then an editor working at book publishers read some of that work and then suggested I try writing a book. So I did. And that’s how I wrote my way into standing before you today.
If reading is like time travel, writing is like magic. It can create paths for you, through your emotions, through hard situations and also through the world. When you write you can create a world for yourself, or one you can share with those around you. You can write your hopes, your ambitions, even spelling out a future for yourself that might not seem possible at first, but is one step closer to reality once it’s written down.
The best thing about writing is that there are no limits and no one can stop you. Everything I write, yes, even my big fat novel, started on the notes app on my phone. When I used work in Pret, serving teas, coffees and fancy salads, I used to write thoughts and ideas on the back on till receipts during my shift. I’m guessing that many of you here who love reading will enjoy writing as well. You don’t need to wait for someone to give you permission to write or call yourself a writer. If you write, you are a writer.”