From working with figures to words

Things work out alright in the end.

If things aren’t right then it’s not the end.

Here’s a story about how things worked out for me as a writer.

I see my career in two, roughly equal, parts. The first 19 years was a conventional career in local government finance. I was a trainee accountant for three years and after getting my professional qualification I worked my way up to be the chief finance officer of a large council.

I got that job aged 37 and by the time I was 40 I wanted to do something different. One of the reasons for that was the fact that, as the boss, I did not create (write) anything anymore. Instead, I reviewed and tweaked the reports and letters and so on that other people wrote, and I signed them off. I realised that the aspect of being an accountant that I liked the most was writing. I joked with people that I should have been a lawyer instead of an accountant. I was not prepared to re-train as a lawyer in my 40s. Instead, looking for variety, I became a freelance consultant.

One of the first things I did after leaving my job was write a novel, Power, Corruption and Lies. It was a story set in local government—write what you know, as they say—that was an enjoyable, and cathartic, creative challenge for me. I did eight drafts and friends read them. I sent it to publishers and agents. Even though it costs very little to send a proposal to a publisher or agent after a while, in my case about 30 rejections, it becomes harder and harder to do.

In December 2008 I went to South Sudan for a week to deliver some capacity-building training to the nascent Ministry of Commerce. Three things came out of that week for me. It led to a lot of other teaching engagements and my involvement with a project to build and run a girls school in Ibba, a South Sudanese village (see https://www.friendsofibba.org). The third thing was encouragement from my friend, and former teacher, that I write a public finance textbook to fill what he saw as a gap in the market.

I worked on a book proposal and sent it to three publishers. One said no, one said it was a good idea but they were not sure how to sell it, and the third said yes.

Financial Management and Accounting in the Public Sector was published in July 2011.

I’m proud of the book. It has been successful enough to yield a second and (next year) a third edition. And I have, since 2011, been commissioned more and more often to do projects that require both an understanding of financial management and the ability to write.

The moral of this story is that sometimes we do not achieve our goals in the way that we imagined them. Yes, I would like to have become a novelist and to earn a living as a full-time writer. Even so, I am a published author and there are people who pay me to put abstract concepts into words. All in all, things have worked out very well in the second half of my career.

PS

If there is a publisher or agent out there who wants to take a look at my municipal fiction then please get in touch. I am more than happy to brush the digital dust of the manuscript of Power, Corruption and Lies and send it to you.