‘I thought I’d just give it a bash’ – The Salford mum who wrote a novel in a month

A mum from Salford has written a book in a month after accepting a national challenge.

Novice author Rebecca Greaves decided to attempt the 30-day novel writing challenge after spotting the campaign to get people writing.

Ms Greave’s novel called ‘All the things I used to do’, is a young adult novel that follows a woman reflecting on her childhood and how she progressed into adulthood.

She tracks her life as her interests change and her she evolves. 

She said: “My children have been a huge inspiration for me, my eldest daughter, now 31, having her first child made me think about where life starts versus how it ends.

 “Although I had the idea for the novel, I sort of never expected to put myself up to the challenge, thinking I’d never have the time.”

She was encouraged to attempt this feat after discovering NaNoWriMo, an organisation which aims to encourage creative writing globally.

The challenge for national novel writing month is to write at least 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November.

She said: “Discovering NaNoWriMo was amazing encouragement for me. Being in a national lockdown for the whole month of November, I realised I had nothing better to do, I could not make excuses to myself.

“Writing this novel filled up so much time, when it was done I had a sense of what do I do next. I realised the easy part was sitting down and writing but what do I do with this story now.”

Rebecca is currently exploring her options for publication.