By Darren Gilbert

“I had tried to write a book for about six years, but I never got further than a couple of chapters in,” admits Nick. “I didn’t know how to do it. So I took off work and enrolled in a week-long writing course, which was run by Sarah Bullen. I decided that I needed to commit 100% to writing a book; a very real shot, instead of just thinking about it all the time.”

Unfortunately, her dreams for the book were short-lived. Instead of following through on the idea she had been trying to write for the past six years – she was told to scrap it. Immediately.

She chuckles when she thinks back to the moment: “On the second day of the writing course, Sarah asked who had an idea for a book.” So, being the eager participant, Nick put up her hand and explained her idea. Bullen didn’t like it. “I said, no, you don’t understand,” says Nick. “So I explained it again. Three times.” But still, Bullen shot her down.

“Up until then, everything I had written during the course had been humour and Sarah was confused because my idea was very dark and South African,” explains Nick. It was a real Apartheid-type novel. “So she asked me to put the idea aside for a moment and write something completely different.”

That something different ended up being the beginning of her debut novel, A Million Miles from Normal.

“For the exercise, we had to come up with a character and I came up with Rachel Marcus. As soon as I freed myself from my old idea, Rachel popped into my head fully formed. And then the whole book appeared in my mind,” explains Nick. “It was bizarre. I knew who Rachel was and I knew what I wanted to do. And I thought, ‘Oh, so this is a book. What I had before; that wasn’t a book. But this was’.”

Bullen agreed, and within a month, Nick had completed the first very messy draft of A Million Miles from Normal.

“I was obsessed with it,” she remembers. “I didn’t go out. I would get up, write, go to work, write at work, write during lunch, come home, and then write some more.”

Of course, writing a book is the easy part; publishing it is another struggle altogether. Especially in South Africa. Add to this the fact that Bullen mentioned Ron Irwin to Nick as the only agent to consider. A seasoned editor, Bullen didn’t think Irwin would have the time to take Nick on. But Nick contacted him anyway.

“I got in touch with Ron and, eventually, he said he’d take a look. Then, after looking at it, he said, ‘Okay, I’ll do an edit’.” He was renovating his house at the time and he needed a new bathtub so he said he’d edit her manuscript if she paid for his bathtub. She said yes without any hesitation.

What he returned a few weeks later was a manuscript drenched in red ink. That didn’t matter to Nick, though. She was so desperate to get in that she didn’t mind. So she made a decision to make all the changes he had suggested, taking it back to him two weeks later.

“He was amazed,” chuckles Nick. “I had done everything he told me to do and he had gotten a bathtub. So he said he would see if he could sell it.”

He had one prerequisite though – he wanted her to start a blog. Irwin needed a point of reference to sell the idea of Nick and her work to publishers. She flatly refused, giving him the usual excuse; she had nothing to say. “I really fought him on the idea,” she says. “I told him, ‘Just tell the publishers I’m nice. And that I can write.” Irwin wouldn’t budge though and Nick eventually gave in, starting what she initially described as “this verk*kte blog”. But then she started enjoying it. This was in 2009.

Since then, Nick has been on a writing spree. Whether it’s writing for her blog, contributing to The Good Book Appreciation Society (which she runs), writing her column for The Sunday Times, or plotting her next novel. Nick has become the quintessential writing machine.

“When I’m writing a book, I have to write every day,” says Nick. “I keep a strict schedule and word count.” Her day job is as a freelance advertising copywriter. If she’s working in a ‘hectic’ agency, she’ll aim for 1000 words a day. If it’s an ‘easy’ agency, she’ll attempt 2000 words per day. And on weekends, Nick will push herself to write between 3000 and 5000 words per day.

This doesn’t mean Nick always finds it easy to write. There are days when it’s hard. Not brain surgery hard, she admits, but it is internally difficult. In fact, Nick will readily confess she’s afraid she’ll forget how to write. “It’s a really weird thing,” she says. “I wrote my second novel, This Way Up, to prove to myself that I could write another book. But every time I start a new book, I say, ‘How did I write the last one? Where did I start?”

Regardless of the occasional writer’s block, Nick is all too aware of her compulsion to write. “I don’t actually have a choice,” she says. “I have to write. I can’t not. I wouldn’t be staying true to myself or to the thing that I want to do when I wake up in the morning if I didn’t.”

For more information, visit www.amillionmilesfromnormal.com. Alternatively, connect with her on Twitter, Instagram or on Snapchat.