You don’t expect to give yourself whiplash while having a nightmare, but that’s exactly what I did. I was seventeen years old, and studying to be a radiographer, a job I absolutely did not want. But I was young, and everyone around me said I could never make a living with my love of words. I was too shy to be a teacher, and what else was there to do?So there I was, waking up giddy and with a terrible pain in my head where I’d sat up mid-nightmare and cracked my head off the wall. What an awakening!At first I was devastated to hear the whiplash injuries were bad enough that I’d have to give up my training. I’d got too much nerve damage for me to lug heavy x-ray machines around, or move patients.Dejected, I traipsed to my college’s career advisor.She asked me a question that changed my life.“What would you do, if you could do anything with your life?”That was easy.“I’d do something with words.”“Let me make a call.”I waited nervously while she called the nearby university.“I can get you an interview, but you need to be there in ten minutes.”I’d have grown wings and flown if I had to. I ran for the nearest bus and made it just in time. The professor asked me about my love of English, and my A+ results at school. I admit, I rambled. I edit myself much better on the page than when I’m talking. At the end of it, he stared at me, eyes narrowed.“I can get you into an honours English program, and get you funding, but only for three years instead of four. You’ll need to do first and second year English together. Think you can do that?”I thought of my parents’ dissapproving faces, as I knew they’d be when It told them. And I thought of how I was never without a book in my hand. How nothing made me happier than words.“I can do it.”And I did. I graduated three years later, with no idea what I was going to do, but confident that my love of words and stories would take me wherever I needed to go. And it has! I’m privileged to make my living as a writer, and help bring other people’s stories to life.