CREATIVE WRITING
Transferable SKILLS
Debut novelist Emma Cowing spent 27 years in print journalism – here’s what it can teach you about novel writing
Photo by Andy Low
Shall we have a look at that box of old photographs?’ I asked my Mum one afternoon in the autumn of 2021. I didn’t know it then, but it was a Sliding Doors moment. If my curiosity hadn’t got the better of me I might never have found a mysterious photograph of my great aunt, and I certainly wouldn’t have written my debut novel The Show Woman. But that’s one benefit of being a journalist: I’ve always been nosey.
Last summer after 27 years in print journalism I hung up my Press credentials for a new career in novel writing. Over the years I’ve interviewed five Scottish First Ministers, four Prime Ministers and one Taliban leader, covering stories from Kandahar to Kirkcaldy. I’ve spent a morning at Susan Boyle’s house and interviewed my teen crush (Christian Slater, swoon), run a campaign for free instrumental music tuition in schools and worked on an investigation into child abuse in Scotland’s legal and political circles in the 1970s.
I’m a relative newcomer to novel writing – my first book was out in May and I’m finishing up edits on my second – but once I started taking my writing seriously, I realised that all those years in the newsroom had stood me in surprisingly good stead. The skills I learned as a journalist aren’t just transferable, they’re relatively simple, too: practical, useful writing advice that works whether you’re filing a 200-word news story or penning the next Ulysses.