The tricky thing about telling people you’re a writer is... that they usually want to read your work. For many, this wouldn’t be a problem. But when I share my stories I tend to get shock and confusion in return. Sometimes revulsion. Sometimes I just get called weird (and that was my Mum). A number of times I’ve been told “I didn’t like anything about this story”, and one of those was the judge of a competition in which I’d been shortlisted.

All of this is to say that becoming a writer has taught me something unexpected. My work doesn’t have to be pretty or safe or societally acceptable — in fact it’s often better if it’s not. All my work has to do is make people feel something. Make people think.

Every writer has that anecdote that starts something like ‘I’ve known I wanted to be a writer ever since…’ For me, it was aged sixteen, sitting in the back of my parent’s car outside Bicester Village (a shopping centre near Oxford). The ‘aha’ moment hit me: I was going to be a travel writer. My first ambitious project would be to visit a coffee shop at every UK train station and write observations about the people, their orders, and their imagined lives. I managed to do the first one in the Café Nero in Malvern — because I could walk to it from my childhood home — before realising my post-GCSE summer break didn’t really give me the time I needed to complete the project. I didn’t have a financial plan either.

Those teenage writing ambitions were swallowed for a time by the general expectations of a young woman growing up in the late 2000s — exams, extracurricular activities, making yourself stand out by being on the debate team, being a prefect, being what you were told to be. I studied Geography at Exeter University and, as the cliché goes, then became a Geography teacher. My students were the absolute best part of teaching and, if any of them happen to stumble across this, then hello! From there, I moved into the charity sector, working at a national youth charity first in operations and then in strategy. As anyone with a child can attest to, becoming a threesome from a twosome completely upended my world and I spent the first couple of years of his life trying to work out which version of me I want him to know. Very philosophical, but sleep deprivation will do that to you.

And that’s how I ended up moving to self-employment towards the end of 2025 and striking out as a writer. I was encouraged to dabble in short stories by several excellent fellow writers, and through these I’ve found a new part of my brain has been unleashed. My short stories seem to come out dark, sex-laden, provocative, and downright odd. And I love every one of them. I think my friends and family are seeing a new ‘me’ through reading these stories, and I’m learning to ride their opinions — I’m no longer the people pleasing picture-perfect 21^st century woman I thought I needed to become.

I’m currently working on my third novel which, to everyone’s surprise, is comparatively normal.

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Read Vicky's short story Silverfish here.