Making the leap into the writer’s life

Our guest at the first Sounds About Write of 2025 (January 16th) is short story writer and novelist Iqbal Hussain (author of Northern Boy, published in 2024 by Unbound). Recently he has quit the rat race to dedicate himself full time to writing, so we asked him to tell us why he made such a huge decision. We hope this will whet your appetite for our upcoming Writers Day (February 8th), where you can hear from many more authors about their journeys into and through the writing life.

After 27 years in the word-processing department of a large City law firm, I’ve handed in my notice. All good things come to an end, and I want to focus on my writing. Colleagues emailed their surprise. I’d started as a temp but never left; I was part of the office furniture. I’d seen others come and go. Now it was my turn to log off one final time. 

Friends checked in. Was I sure? Couldn’t I just drop a day? Take a sabbatical? Even though they’d made major career moves themselves, they found it hard to countenance I’d reached that stage as well. My late Dad voiced his admonishments in my ear: what ‘baqwaas’ was this? Was this why he’d left Pakistan? Did he toil in the mills for me to sit on my backside? What was I thinking, giving up a safe job and a pension for the wilds of going it alone? (Actually, I’d already made one momentous change in my working life. Despite graduating with a maths degree, I always wanted to work with words, not numbers, so I took a postgrad journalism diploma, then spent seven years writing for children’s and women’s magazines. I left journalism when the stress outweighed the enjoyment.)

What led to this latest career decision? A midlife crisis? A bet gone wrong? Boredom? No, just the realisation I could no longer balance a full-time job with writing. I’ve given it a good go. For the last few years, I’ve powered down the work PC on a Friday, then on Saturday and Sunday mornings fired up the Mac. While I managed to squeeze 25 hours out of each day, it’s involved many sacrifices, including staying in when everyone else was out.

For years, I worked on my debut novel, Northern Boy, writing, rewriting, editing, and then editing some more. It took a long time to finish the book. I was constantly switching heads: from logical work head to creative writing head. It wasn’t easy to make that demarcation. You can’t just dial it in. If I had to solve a plot-hole, I’d still be thinking about the badly formatted document it had taken me hours to fix the previous day. You need time off, to recalibrate, and then there was work, moving house, managing builders, the pandemic, adopting a dog, visiting family back up North, spending quality time with my partner, and the hundred other demands of normal life. Afterwards, I vowed I wouldn’t write another book in that stop-start, drawn-out way. 

With everything in place, one question kept going round and round in my head: if not now, then when?

So, I made the leap and quit work.

I’ve long dreamt about being able to write full-time. But it’s only now that I’m able to make it a reality. Lots of thing have aligned – honing my craft, getting my name out there, entering and placing in competitions, finding an agent, running workshops, building a writing community and making connections in the wider industry. And, of course, the biggie – finances. While I can’t say much yet, exciting things have happened on the writing front in the year just gone to give me that much-needed cushion. I know I’m lucky – but it’s been hard-fought for. We working class children are used to hand-me-downs, not handouts.

Have I misgivings? None. Just excitement. As when I was a freelance journalist, I’ll spend my days once more wrestling with words. And, without the pressures of the day job, I’ll be able to see exactly what I’m capable of producing. I’ve got my weekends back. It’s been a long time in the making, but I’ll be fully embracing this new chapter of my working life.