I thought that there were two separate languages: one sounds and one squiggles

I think every debut writer feels amazed when they see their book on the shelves in a bookshop — "that's my novel and it's beside real books by proper authors". For me, it is extra bewildering as I am dyslexic.

I couldn't read until I was eight. No one explained to me that the written shapes on the page were related to the words we spoke. I thought there were two separate languages: one sounds and one squiggles. This was the late Eighties and none of my teachers knew about dyslexia. They were mystified as to why a child who was obviously "bright and very talkative in class — perhaps a little too talkative" — was utterly unable to keep up with reading, let alone writing. Perhaps, they suggested to my mother, I had a hearing impairment. I was sent for tests and when my hearing was declared perfect it was decided: I was careless and lazy.

Aged 10, I watched with embarrassment as my friends gobbled up Treasure Island and Pippi Longstocking while I spent two whole terms entirely failing to read Worzel Gummidge — a book I still can't look at without a faint feeling of panic. But at this point I got lucky. I have always loved stories — even when I couldn't read them, I could listen to them: on tape during car journeys and at bedtime when my dad would read to me. My dad was sneaky, insisting on Enid Blyton adventure stories. He'd read a chapter or two and then stop right in the middle of a cliff-hanger and, refusing to read another word, he'd say goodnight and leave the book open on the bedside table. If I wanted to find out whether Philip or Jack or Lucy-Anne escaped from the island of doom I would just have to read it myself.

With the help of my dad and Enid Blyton, my reading improved dramatically but by the time I reached secondary school my writing was still hopelessly behind. Nonetheless, it was around then that I realised I wanted to be a writer. I could think of nothing better than spending all day spinning stories but for me it seemed a childish ambition as unlikely as becoming an astronaut. Every piece of work came back with endless corrections and my teachers remained infuriated that I could spell the same word three different ways on a single page (something I still do with names, much to my copy-editor's chagrin). Other work was simply scored through in red with the remarks "unreadable" or "hopeless".

Writers often discuss the gap between their idea and the finished book — the story as written is never quite as we imagine it. There is always that tantalising gap between language and what it describes. For a dyslexic child this frustration is acute. I knew the story I wanted to tell; I could even say it aloud and yet when the words hit the page: chaos. Using the written word was for me as awkward as trying to wind a watch while wearing boxing gloves. I had all these stories in my head but was utterly unable to express them. I experienced terrible frustration and became anxious and withdrawn.

The person who best understood this battle with language was my grandfather, Paul. He was a refugee who'd arrived in Britain from Berlin in the late Thirties, and appreciated my struggle with English. He complained that he no longer spoke any language perfectly — his English was heavily accented and his German was "museum German", the language of the Thirties. I'd visit him after school and together we'd concoct stories, he encouraging me to read mine aloud and always succeeding somehow in laughing in the right places and not the wrong ones. I composed an essay about Paul's childhood in Berlin and for the first time in my school career I received a glowing report from my teacher: "Is your grandfather going to write a book? Perhaps you should write it for him." I remember with absolute clarity the moment she read my essay out to the class. I listened, thrilled that for once I'd succeeded in translating my ideas into sentences.

I was finally diagnosed with dyslexia when I was 13. I was doing homework with my best friend, Katy, who went to a different school and had been diagnosed years before, when I realised that I struggled with just the same things as she did. I went on a homework strike until my school agreed to refer me for a dyslexia test. The results were definitive.

Technically, dyslexia is a disability but I prefer to think I just view the world slightly differently from other people. I see odd connections between things, and I like to believe that my brain's natural chaos enhances my creativity.

It does make some things very difficult. A-levels were quite a challenge. The head of department at Manchester University where I was taking my English degree told me when returning some coursework that "some students can write but I'm afraid you just can't".

My husband is a writer, and after reading an early draft of my novel, he gave me some tough advice. He said the story was funny, charming and sad, but in places the writing was chaotic, unreadable even. Thus followed several months of hard editing.

I took online grammar courses, I read my work aloud, trying to weed out errors. When he read the book again, he couldn't quite believe it, confessing that he had wondered whether it was possible for me to improve sufficiently. I had even conquered the comma. Well, almost.