I’ve always been a writer. I can say that with some confidence.

I was always top of the tree when it came to writing “essays” at junior school. Two or three times I had to stand at the front of the class and read out my latest offering (something of a contrast to later years when I was often found standing in the corner of the classroom or even in the HM’s study but that, as they say, is another story).
I remember winning an award for my story about being a snowflake, floating down from the freezing sky, talking to fellow snowflakes on the way down, landing with a bump, surviving a snowball fight and becoming part of a snowman, built by a kid I became friendly with. I was slightly put out when the teacher pointed out I would have melted and how would I have approached that. I was seven for crying out loud!
I moved on to writing imaginary football reports, where yours truly was naturally the star and how would the team cope without me when I picked up an injury. My father found them one day and was impressed with my creativity and the standard of writing.
Then came secondary school and the discovery of – in no particular order – football (well, all sports really), alcohol, the fairer sex (I have no idea if that is an acceptable term these days, but to hell with it), tobacco, music etc. In other words, I had many other attractions to invest my creative juices in, and writing was shunted into the sidings.
I didn’t do brilliantly in my ‘O’ Levels for many reasons, although I am prepared to accept that the main reason for my dismal performance was … me. Still, I passed English – Language, and Literature, I’ll have you know! – and had one eye on a career in journalism. The Careers master told me I didn’t have the right qualifications which just goes to underscore the fact that Careers masters in the late 1970s were simply marking time and knew less about careers than I did about logarithms, slide rules, vectors and other such tripe.
So I became a journalist, working on local newspapers and a year of Saturday-night shifts on the Sunday People (these days, simply the People). I’m proud to say I had my fair share of scoops before I “majored” in sports journalism which, after a while, I found too formulaic and sedentary. While my mates were covering murders and trials at the Old Bailey, I was busy rewriting/subbing hand-written match reports of hockey games. I managed to get a buzz from headline writing and upsetting the manager of the local Football League club with what I considered to be witty, insightful and pithy comments.
I fell into the world of corporate publishing – writing and editing magazines and newspapers for the employees of blue chip companies. I didn’t know such an industry existed until I landed in it quite by chance but I found I quite liked it and that, if I may be so bold, I was also quite good at it. I liked my clients, they relied on me. And I helped win them stacks of awards.
I climbed the ladder, jumped the fence into the corporate sector where the grass was straw-coloured, and quickly came back to the agency side. In time, I found myself one of three co-owners of a London-based agency and we took that company to some heady heights, despite the global financial implosion, the continued stripping of budgets and the diminishing quality of client contacts.
I continued to write but my words of wisdom were, by and large, confined to new business and proposal documents. Mind you, there was some creativity in a few of those. Fanciful may be more apt …
And then I retired. Why? Because I could.
They say there is a book in everyone, which is clearly rubbish, but I was pretty sure there was one in me. Possibly a few. I knew I had the ideas and enough of a creative mind to bring them to life but … was my writing good enough? I wrote my memoirs of Sunday League football as a kind of test and shared it with my friends who gave it the thumbs-up (not that I’m convinced all of them read every word) and took a diploma in Forensic Psychology which would not only extend the little grey scales but which would also require a high standard of written response. The feedback from my tutor was very positive.
So I took the plunge.
The idea of a fictional autobiography of a footballer had been floating around my mind for ages and the more I thought about it the more it took shape – often as I sat waiting for the train to or from London to overcome signal failure, points failure, overhead wire problem, lack of operating staff. Let me tell you, there was a lot of time to think and develop the concept. Still, at least there were trains to be delayed …
Strangely enough, I didn’t commit anything to paper or PC until the day I started to write. The first chapter, the scene-setter, just flowed. I knew the book was about a rubbish club made good and “my” part in its rise so the opening was straightforward – start at the bottom.
Many of the subsequent chapters came easily enough as well, the fact that some parts of the book are genuinely autobiographical helped make the process easier.  
That’s not to say it was a cinch to write. There were inevitable frustrations, passages deleted, tranches rewritten, the occasional light bulb moment. I didn’t suffer from “writer’s block” – if I found the words wouldn’t flow I simply walked away from the laptop. Some days I wrote very little, some days I “penned” thousands of words.
Most importantly, I knew in which direction the story was heading. Inevitably, that direction meandered a couple of times and there were additional passages which I hadn’t planned – the chapter Going Dutch being a good example. Close friends who read this will recognise certain aspects of it.
My most challenging aspect was ensuring the chronology was accurate and not long after I started to put finger to keyboard, I stopped trying to file everything in my head and, using a good old-fashioned pad and coloured pens, created a “planner”, which outlined what happened and when, as well as the names of characters and places. That helped and has been crucial in subsequent offerings, all of which I hope will be coming to a bookseller near you in the not-too-distant.
There are some parts I am especially pleased with. It was important to portray the challenges a lower-league footballer in the late 1970s faced and what better way to do that than to describe a coach journey from the south of England to Barrow for a midweek winter fixture? Endless journeys on a clapped-out coach, poor hotel, awful food, boredom, warm beer and winter weather all feature in Chapter Four, the Longest Trek.
I consider myself to be a bit of an observer of human behaviour, which meant I enjoyed bringing some of the characters to life, notably Iain Moy and Dutch Pieters, both loosely based on characters who have passed through my life.
So, can I write? I think I can. So do my publishers, Austin Macauley who were “keen to comment on my ability to formulate a compelling story, supported by humorous tones. This undoubtedly helped build and sustain the reader’s attention thanks to the well-conceived and developed structure of the work”.
Nice to hear, but the true barometer is the reader and I hope you find this offering as enjoyable to read as I did writing it.
I would be delighted to hear your thoughts.

Ed Roberts

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