It’s World Book Day today and, if you or anyone you know has primary school aged children, then your social media is probably full of pictures of them dressed as characters from books. Some will be wearing shop-bought costumes and others will be be the result of hours of labour by a parent, probably late into the evening last night, sometimes to huge success, and sometimes not quite what they (or the child) had envisaged. Oops.

This year, the munchkin is in year 7 – senior school – so it’s the first time in years when she hasn’t needed to dress up. I’m not particularly creative when it comes to costume ideas for World Book Day. My excuse is that all my creative juices go into my books and there are none left for making fancy dress costumes. I also very much come from the “We’re not spending loads of money on this so if it’s not in your wardrobe already or can’t be created from something in your wardrobe, it’s not going to happen” school of thought. What a meany, eh?

I’ve been trying to remember what munchkin dressed as over the years and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast most days so this is no mean feat. I’m pretty sure we did a few Disney Princess years – very easy – and we had a cute ladybird costume so she became the ladybird in Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. She wanted to be Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one year although she refused to have her face painted. I do remember spending quite a bit of time making a golden ticket that year but the outfit must have been something blue or purple from her wardrobe. I’m pretty certain we’ve had Hermione from the Harry Potter books too. I think. Hmm. Told you my memory was bad.

One of my favourite costumes, though, was in her penultimate year at primary school. I did my usual “We’re not spending loads…” lecture and, after some sulking, she came up with the idea herself: Mia from The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot, inspired by the outfit worn by Anne Hathaway in the film. We plaited her hair the night before but, other than that, the outfit took very little effort. Unfortunately she split her lunch down her dad’s silk tie and it didn’t look too happy after I tried to hand wash it clean but, seeing as he works from home and never wears shirts and ties, I decided we could live with that sacrifice.

This year is the 22nd World Book Day and, although it is aimed at children: “World Book Day is a registered charity on a mission to give every child and young person a book of their own”, World Book Day is “a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and (most importantly) it’s a celebration of reading.” These quotes, along with a stack of fabulous information and images, can be found on the official World Book Day website. It’s been lovely seeing Facebook posts from authors celebrating their achievements and I couldn’t resist knocking together a quick post of my own, courtesy of a Canva template (shown at the start of this post) and this got me thinking…

I still have many dreams I want to achieve with my writing, including earning enough to make it my main job, but the first dream was simply to finish a book and see it published. I achieved that in 2015 and it’s a good reminder to myself that, whilst sales can be disappointing, high chart positions can seem elusive, news from publishers can seem slow, and rejections can be difficult, I wrote a book. Then repeated it 9-fold. Actually 10-fold but that’s the one doing the round of publishers. And I’m halfway through my current WIP with another two books started. It’s not that long ago since I wondered if I’d ever finish one. So I’ll raise my can of Diet Pepsi to World Book Day and feel proud that I turned my love of reading into a love of writing too.

Happy World Book Day to everyone, whether a reader, writer or both. Whatever genre you read, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, whether it’s eBook, paperback, audio or a combination, keep doing it. Immerse yourself in information, meet new characters, experience different worlds and keep learning.

Jessica xx