In his wonderful book ‘Delight’ which praises, in short essays of a page or two, the joys of everyday things and experiences (including a new box of matches, clowning about and the sound of a football) the esteemed novelist and playwright JB Priestley wrote in praise of what he called ‘Cosy with Work’.

‘I often feel delight now in merely surveying my desk and the rather pitiful implements of my craft laid out on that desk, all waiting for me,’ he wrote. ‘Typewriter, paper, pencils and erasers, notebooks, works of reference – they are all ready for me, these sensible old colleagues. Here is my own tiny world that I understand. The other world, so vast, so idiotic, is now shut out and can be forgotten for a few hours.’

Seventy-seven years after he wrote that, I feel exactly the same way. Substitute laptop for typewriter and it’s pretty much the same. Every day when I settle down with these ‘implements of my craft’ and the view from my window of the fig tree in my small garden, no matter what kind of chaos is going on in the world outside, for the next few hours I am happy.

To love what you do, to head with pleasure into the questions and demands of a new working day with, as JB Priestley put it ‘a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning’, is a gift. And luckily for each one of us that gift is different.

I recently wrote a book with a man named Paul who was driving home from his unexciting job one day when he passed a slightly shabby, one-storey building, tucked in between terraced homes in a side street of a small Scottish town. The only thing that marked it out was the sweet scent in the air as you approached. Inside were old fashioned boiling pans, boxes of fruit and glass jars. It was a little jam factory known locally as ‘The Jammy’ and, almost on a whim, Paul cashed in his savings and bought it.

Over the next twenty years he worked long hours and sank every penny he could back into the business, even mortgaging his home to keep it going. Eventually the jam he produced, Mackays, became one of the most popular brands in the country, and in many other countries too. Paul’s passion for, well, making jam, made him a happy man and he decided to put everything he had learned into a book called, naturally, ‘A Sticky Business’.

For Paul what got him out of bed each day was jam, while for Stewart, another author, it was being a voice coach in the theatre, bringing out the best in actors. Then there was Bobby, the brilliant drummer with The Hollies (All I Need is the Air That I Breathe…), a band that toured every single year (barring a couple for Covid) for over 60 years. Well into his seventies Bobby’s joy when he got behind a drum kit was undimmed.

Denise was a psychic, a brilliant one too, her skills were uncanny. And Tanya, finding herself a single parent of two young children with no visible means of making a living, sat down at her kitchen table with a nice bit of material and a sewing machine and grew a clothing business called Ghost which became one of Britain’s most successful women’s clothing retailers in the 1990s.

Each of these people loved what they did so much that they decided to write a book about it. Not just how they did it, but the pleasures and excitements and the many challenges along the way. I had the pleasure of collaborating with each of them and in the course of our few months together, learning a little bit about the unique world that each of them had created. What a delight it was, and still is, for me to work with the kind of people who, as JB might have said, each created their own ‘bit of magic’. And what a delight it was for them to know that their achievements were recorded forever in a book.

So if you’ve worked to build something – a business, a career, a craft, if you love what you do and you love the idea of putting it into a book, then get in touch with us at United Ghostwriters. We’ll be ready and waiting, implements of our trade to hand.

Caro Handley has collaborated on over 70 books