Emma Cooper tells us about her writing journey.

If someone had told me a year ago that I would be a full-time writer I would have probably spat out my coffee; if they told me that I would be writing a piece for Good Housekeeping I would have probably choked on my biscuit and if they told me that my novel was going to be published in seven different territories I would have probably had a Tena lady moment.

This time last year I was working as a teaching assistant in a junior school. I have four children and my typical day would begin at half-five whereby I would sneak downstairs, make my morning cup of tea, clutch my kindle beneath my arm and cherish ten minutes reading in bed before the P.E kit finding, permission-slip-signing storm.

Music has always been a huge part of my life. From an early age I can remember singing along to the radio, which Mum always had blaring in the background. I remember holidays in Rhyl dancing to Agadoo, grinding coffee and shaking pineapples on the camp club dance floor. That was before my teenage years when Bros asked me when I would be famous, their faces covering my bedroom walls, only to be pushed aside as Step by Step, New Kids on The Block replaced them, but the New Kids could smell my teen spirit and soon they were pushed aside by The Pixies, and Jim Morrison showed them the door.

My partner Russell and I met when I was eighteen, our song on the jukebox in the local pub was ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, a duet by Bono and Frank Sinatra. We bought our first house when I was twenty and had our first child when I was twenty-two. Three years later we had a daughter and then a son the year after.

Music continued to be part of our family life; Ethan would only sleep with The Sundays playing, for Ally it was The Stereophonics and Max was a huge Avril Lavigne fan (when he was a baby, he has asked me to clarify!)

Life was certainly busy and money was always short but we got by; making little cuts to our shopping, plum tomatoes instead of chopped as they were 3p cheaper, turkey instead of chicken, those types of things.  My spare time was sparse, but I would always manage to sink my head between the pages of a novel when I could.

As time went by… slowly, my children started school and I was eager to go back to working ‘Nine to Five’ and became a dinner lady at my local school. After nine years at home, my confidence was at rock bottom and I remember looking down at my skirt during the interview and watching the hem shaking against my legs.

After a year, I applied for a teaching assistant position which is a job that is as demanding as it is satisfying, and I worked with a wonderful team of teachers and not a day went by where I didn’t laugh.

As life settled into a manic routine, I began thinking about writing. I was learning things about the English language which I would have only expected to learn at university. The amazing teachers I worked with teaching me how to ‘show not tell’, how to use ‘pathetic fallacy’, explaining how a semi-colon works; soon I began planning out plot lines and writing a few short stories in my spare time.

I was heading towards my late thirties by this point and my biological clock was ticking so loudly that the only way to shut it up was to have another baby, so in 2013, we had our fourth baby – a girl… my, my, my Delilah. Our life was turned upside down as Russell found out that he was being made redundant from his job in a bank. Once again, we were thrown into financial hardship, once again I was buying plum tomatoes and turkey, but we were still laughing, still listening to music, still surviving, even though I was afraid: I was petrified.

The idea for The Songs of Us was a slow burner. During my lunchtimes back at the school, I began thinking about writing a book revolving around lyrics to songs, I started paying more attention to lyrics on the radio, trying to picture circumstances where I could use the lyrics to explain what was happening in the scene.

One lunchtime, my eleven-year-old son was sat with his friends in the dinner hall and without thinking I bent down and kissed the top of his head, just as I would have if we were at home. But we weren’t. Instead my son glared at me as his friends sniggered. What if I wrote a book where embarrassing her children was something a woman couldn’t control?

On the 21^st February 2015 (this date remains in the novel) I went for an afternoon nap but couldn’t get the idea of Melody and her story ‘Outta My Head’ and so I began to write. I stopped being a dinner lady and instead wrote in the small school office during my lunch hour, sometimes having a few eager ten-year-old writers sitting next to me; silently tapping away, improving our craft. In the evenings I would grab snippets of precious time so I could hit my target of 500 words a day. It wasn’t much, but it was achievable, and by the end of the week I would have a chapter.

It took a year, but I did it. The first draft was ready. I anxiously passed it to friends to read and to Russell. I remember the day he finished it and was so choked up that he could barely talk, ‘I can’t tell you how good it is,’ he’d said. Nothing was gonna to stop us now.

I continued working on the manuscript, fixing typos, chopping and changing scenes, all with the support of my friends and family, until I was ready to start submitting the first three chapters to agents and publishers.

In March 2017 I had the email I had been waiting for. An agent, Amanda Preston, asked to see the full manuscript. After a short time of me obsessively checking my emails, there it was, an innocent looking email that was about to change my life. She told me that she loved my novel, that I was an incredible writer (incredible! I re-read this word over and over again) and she wanted to help me find a publisher. She did that and more. By June I had been offered two five-figured advances from Italy and Germany on the same day that my card had been declined in Aldi. I was then part of a six-way auction in France, as my exhaust fell off my car, and sold rights in four other countries while Russ tied it back on with a piece of string. The icing on the cake was a contract with Headline here in the UK with the incredible Jennifer Doyle as my editor.

After working in the school I loved for eleven years, with amazing colleagues and friends, I was now in a position to make the brave decision to leave them and follow my dream… to be a full-time writer.

A few months ago, I visited London. (I’d never even seen Buckingham Palace before!) I walked into the Hachette UK building with my agent (and my mum!) by my side and was led into a room with my book displayed behind my wonderful editorial team as they smiled and welcomed me like I was, well, like I was a writer; not like a woman who didn’t go to university and who has four children but could never afford to get married, but as a woman who never gave up. Even when the going got tough. It was at that moment that I realised, dreams can come true… it can happen to you.

The Songs of Us is out now!