The short and sweet biography
Clare Littleford was born in Bedford in 1973. She now lives in Nottingham and works in community development in the voluntary sector. Her first novel, Beholden, a psychological crime novel set in Nottingham, was published in February 2003 by Pocket Books (Simon and Schuster). Her second novel, Death Duty, was published in paperback on 5 April 2004.
The more long-winded version
I was born in Bedford in 1973, and grew up on a sprawling suburban housing estate on the edge of the sprawling commuter-belt town.
I wrote a lot as a kid. I can remember the excitement of starting a new story when I was young - writing that first paragraph, looking at the words, then getting bored and starting another story, just to get that buzz again. Sometimes I even got half way through a story. By the time I was about twelve, I had graduated to actually finishing the stories, most of the time.
I knew I wanted to be a writer, I just didn't know how to go about it. The idea had an exciting edge of illegitimacy about it - every adult I knew had a sensible, proper, adult job. I can remember being asked by a neighbour what I wanted to do when I grew up - did I want to be a housewife, or would I have a career as well? I wanted to say neither, but there didn't seem to be another option.
When I left aged 18 to go to university, I realised I didn't really want to go back to Bedford. Not to live, anyway; I don't mind visiting, and walking around in a haze of nostalgia that quickly reminds me why I never returned.
I went to university in York and studied English Literature, in the mistaken belief that this was what you had to do if you wanted to become a writer. I learned a lot about Literature, and Literary Theory, but the great weight of The Canon intimidated me out of writing. I didn't see how I could ever write anything anywhere near as good as the books I was reading, so I took the more enjoyable option of throwing myself into student life instead.
After finishing university, I moved to Nottingham and started working for Nottingham City Council, in the Housing Department, in a small office in the centre of an inner city housing estate. I learned a lot about the realities of city life during that time - and I also learned I didn't like being on the receiving end of people's dissatisfactions.
So, after three years, I started working for a regional literature development project, where I met people who really were writing for a living. Being a writer suddenly didn't seem like an impossible dream. I met the late John Forbes, a wonderful Australian poet, who gave me the kick I needed to get started as a writer again. I went on a weekend writing course organised by East Midlands Arts, and discovered that I wasn't completely hopeless as a writer.
The project I was working for folded, so I did a variety of jobs. I worked for a construction company ordering traffic cones on a computer system - the thrill of the job came in specifying whether the cones had black rubber bases or reflective stripes. I worked for a tennis club, an armoured van company, a child welfare charity, in a call centre for a rollerblind manufacturer, and as an administrator at Nottingham Trent University.
All this time, I was attempting to write. I enrolled on the MA in Writing at Nottingham Trent University, which proved to be a wonderful course. I met a lot of other aspiring writers, and we talked about writing and books non-stop. Input from successful writers made it all seem possible.
I was frustrated by my lack of time to write, so I started working part time for a community development project in inner city Nottingham, which was a job I loved. More importantly, it gave me the space to write.
I completed the novel I had started while on the MA, which evolved into my first novel Beholden. I was lucky enough to find an agent and a publisher for the book. I now work freelance in community development in Nottingham, alongside various writing projects. My second novel, Death Duty, is due to be published in January 2004 in hardback and April 2004 in paperback, and I am now working on my third novel.
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