It’s been a busy few months. We’ve said goodbye to Sydney (for the time being), spent a couple of months in England, and are now living in Singapore. We spent two and a half years here from 2009 for my job, both my children were both born here; it feels like we never left.

The last time I wrote I was waiting to hear back from Cornerstones with my editorial report. I got it just before Christmas to find my novel wasn’t quite as finished as I thought it was. I took a stab at some rewrites, then realised I needed to do quite a bit more. I read about a competition Cornerstones was running called the Wow Factor, the first stage of which called for the first five pages of a manuscript. In early March, I decided to rework my opening and then enter. In the end, I completely overhauled the first three chapters and from there, decided the rest of the book needed the same treatment. I have been flat out on it for over two months and this week just about finished. Excitingly, I have also found out that I made the long list for the competition, although the shortlist is yet to be announced…

These rewrites have been a learning process for me. My advice to anyone getting an editorial report is to take lots of time to think about what the editor has said to you. In my case, the editor identified several areas where I could make improvements to my book and at first I just looked for the obvious fixes. Realising what else needed to be done happened in a drip feed way and, in the end, making good on her advice was a much subtler exercise than I had initially thought. It was also a lot more hard work. I have now incorporated two new points of view, one of which is a child’s, made some plot changes, got to know my characters a lot better and, once again, have a different book. It’s been a matter of perseverance getting here (on some late nights it’s felt like grim endurance), and this novel is both my first and my thirtieth… but it’s been worth every moment I’ve spent on it.

I’m still out of corporate life and it’s getting easier to think of staying here the longer I spend away from it. I am however going to start doing a couple a days of week of consulting work since money is one of life’s necessities… especially when you are bringing up your children a thirteen hour flight away from most of their family. My children seem to take having me at home completely for granted (both a good thing and a bad thing) although I am still adjusting to it. One of the things I’ve discovered is that when you are at home with young kids you literally never get time to yourself. You listen to their music (we have ‘Now That’s What I Call Disney’, it has four CDs and I know the words and track number of every single song), read their choice of stories – my commutes with ipod and book seem a long time ago – and, when they go to bed, tidy up after them, eat dinner with your partner and then, in my case, start work. People who have older children tell me this doesn’t last forever, that it gets easier… I’m trying to believe them.

Having said all of that, next month it’s back to the UK for another visit and whilst there, I’m going on my own to Ypres (where a large part of my book is set) for a couple of days. I am really looking forward to it, to being where all my characters have been. More to follow…

For the first couple of weeks after I left corporate life when people said to me, ‘Wow, you are taking a big risk,’ I was hard pressed not to flick my hair and smile smugly. Six weeks in, finally nanny-less, juggling fulltime care of two small children with writing in the evenings (and sandwiching in work on a new startup that my sister and a friend are launching back in the UK), I feel a little less self-assured about the whole thing. Indeed, when an old colleague phoned me the other day as I wheeled my kids around our local supermarket, grimacing at the cost of out-of-season fruit, and spoke at some length about the risk I was taking, I almost had to reach for a paper bag!

The great stuff, like having my three year old say to me, ‘I love spending lots of time with you don’t I Mummy,’ or watching my one year old get better and better at walking – all the small things that make up knowing and being part of all the parts of their days, is balanced by a growing nervousness. My missing salary is more conspicuous with each passing week (and I must say my leaving work just in time for Christmas does not go down as my most strategic move), and frankly caring for two small children through the day is even more exhausting than going into the office, and certainly every bit as labour intensive - not much has changed on that score, I am still working well into every evening. Then, there is the fact that now that I am not just talking about giving up my corporate self to pursue the career I so desperately want to succeed at, I have left myself with only two potential endings: the one which reads, ‘I just haven’t given it a go yet,’ has vanished, and now I simply have success or failure ahead of me.  Frankly, it is terrifying.

When I used to act at school, or even more recently when I present with work, I can only ever conquer my nerves by distancing myself from the reality of the situation; I believe now I need to not think about what I am doing too much, and just keep doing it! I have a sunny Christmas in Sydney ahead of me and my parents flying out to spend it with us. I was lucky enough the other day to have an agent give me some really great advice about things to think about with my manuscript before submitting it to her for consideration in the new year. It needs to be head down, tunnel vision for me now, or else I fear I might just find myself walking back through the doors of my office in early February – and I feel very sure that that would be a bad thing. Not only would my kids be crushed, I would be; to go back to seeing them an hour a day now that I have realized how much I was missing is a horrible thought. But more than that, I think it would be very, very bad for my own self to do that. Even writing this I am reminding myself that now I have gone through the hard bit of ripping the plaster off  by turning my back on it all, I need to just grit my teeth and keep it off - and hold onto the conviction that I must, must, keep after my dream.