It all began with an idea. But it wasn’t an idea you might expect - as in the plot of the book. It was an idea to just simply write. It sounds really simple, doesn’t it?
The Tipple Twins and the Gift
Once I got the idea to write a children’s book, I had to think carefully of the sort of stuff I was interested in as a child and what I might put in this book. I remember growing up in the 90’s and loving a programme called ‘sister sister’. It’s about twin girls and how they face real problems in the world that every teenager does, all the while it was told in a really comical way. There was something that really drew me to this programme and I honestly think it was the fact that they were twins.
What I find particularly strange, is that being a twin yourself doesn’t mean you are exempt from being interested in twins. I’m not saying that I thought me and my own twin were interesting, because I didn’t. When other people showed an interest in us, I didn’t really get it. To me I was just, well, me. And my twin was just my sister.
But let’s face it, if you see identical twins walking around, you can’t help but point and say ‘look twins!’ and I think there’s something really magical about that. Twins are like little parcels of joy roaming the streets and if you ever spot them it’s like some sort of weird victory. You know the feeling you get when you spot Wally on a ‘where’s wally’ book?
But moving on, how did I manage to use my experience as a twin, and how did it inspire my work? Every writer knows that you must write the book you would love to read, but also, you must write what you know. And there it was, I know what it’s like to be a twin - I am a twin. And so, my main characters were born. Jenna and Jessica Tipple. Please don’t ask me how I thought up of their surname, which, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with alcohol and the need for it, after a long and tiresome day bringing up my own twin boys.
RELATED: What does it mean to dream about twins?
On a serious note, there was one thing that really inspired me to write about twins, and that was the mischief that comes with it. I remember being in secondary school, and I went out with this boy that I didn’t really want to go out with any more. So, what did I do? It sounds really awful, but I got my twin to phone him and dump him for me. How that conversation went is another story, but it’s safe to say he one hundred percent believed it was me. It's little things like this that drive me to write about twins, and considering Jenna and Jessica start to come out of their shell so much in the second novel (that I’m writing now) I can’t wait to put these little dynamics into my story.
I think when you look back at your life experience, you can see the humour in it. Don’t get me wrong, watching my twin dump my own boyfriend at the time made me almost as tense as I was when watching The Woman in Black at the cinema. But I do think of it as a fond memory that happened because I was twin. When people ask us if we ever ‘fooled’ anyone one, I say ‘actually yes I did! It was my boyfriend!’
To finish off, there’s one thing that I find in my life to be a complete blessing, and that is not only do I get to be a twin, but I now have twin boys of my own. Even though they aren’t identical, I still admire them all the same and find it a joy to watch them. I really do feel lucky, as an author writing about twins, I get to use my experience as a twin but also get to watch my very own pair grow too. Who wouldn’t love that?
RELATED: How personalised books can encourage reading and aid learning by children’s author Mike Molloy
THE LOOK OF COMPLETE ASTONISHMENT on the child’s face I gave my first ever personalised book to was enough to convince me that personalised books are 100% the way forward when encouraging children to read. If we can grab their interest at an early age, we can steer them onto a rewarding literacy journey for life... to read more click HERE
