Months after excitedly deciding to start a writing course in Somerset, then advertising it and it selling out, I actually have to teach my first lesson – and it dawns on me that I am totally out of my depth. Until now I have never taught an adult to write: will I be up to it?

My intentions in setting up the course seemed simple. Writing has been a gift to me since I was little, when I scribbled earnest poems into pretty pink notebooks about emotions I couldn’t imagine anyone else felt. It’s too simple to say writing has made me happy. At times it’s agonising, frustrating and fraught. Yet it has always given me a tool to lift myself out of situations and look at them afresh. When I’ve been lonely, writing connected me to people; it gave me perspective when I was depressed or allowed me to access feelings that ­otherwise I couldn’t express.

Still, ­liking something doesn’t mean you can teach other people to do it. The reality is that my experience of teaching has been limited. Occasionally, I’ve been hired by schools to chat to sixth-formers about journalism (a talk I usually begin at 9am by telling a tired crowd of teenagers that the best part of my job is never waking up until 10). Last year, during my doomed attempt to move to Cornwall, my one triumph was reaching out to Falmouth University, where the journalism department allowed me to give the odd seminar and start mentoring media students. Last year, I also put on a writing course for enthusiastic young girls at Curly’s Farm, a community farm project on the Isle of Sheppey. These small forays into teaching told me that I enjoyed it. It’s fun sharing skills I’ve acquired in 15 years as a ­journalist – and good for my self-esteem to realise I have actually learnt something in that time.

So my writing course in Somerset has sold out. This is surprising and thrilling – but swiftly followed by the panicked realisation that now I definitely can’t get out of it. This panicked state lasted several weeks during which I was paralysed by imposter syndrome; by the time my frantic lesson planning began, Martin was staying. I reasoned that if I could teach an ADHD model to write then anyone else would be easy, so I insisted on taking Martin through my course at my kitchen table. Several hours, and several hundred words later, he looked up in shock. “You’re actually quite good at this writing thing,” he he conceded. “Although maybe it turns out I’m better at it.”

I head to my first lesson, at Shepton Mallet’s Art Bank Café on a Thursday evening in the cold, through the fog. It is 7pm and already dark when I set off in the car. I have a flashback to my childhood in rural Wales, and my mother driving me through dark lanes to a remote church hall for ballet lessons. I’m reminded that in the countryside socialising feels different to the casual way I went out in London, where I rarely made plans, preferring instead to wonder spontaneously to Shoreditch or Soho. The countryside requires more organisation, and perhaps for that reason going out feels more significant. Thinking this gives me another flash of guilt.

I start my first lesson by buying the group wine – “the key to all great writing!” – while joking that the course is so cheap because I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. “Think of me as a comedian still working on my material,” I grin. The group smile politely, presumably unaware I am serious.

In the sessions that follow, I take them through various exercises (top secret and patented to KG Personal Writing Courses Ltd), designed not so much to turn them into Jonathan Franzen (although that would be great) as simply to get them writing.

Because really this is the only trick to being a writer – you actually have to do it.

We do exercises about how to show not tell, we talk about images, structure and cadence. But what quickly becomes apparent – rather thrillingly to me – is that what I teach this group doesn’t matter, because once ignited their creativity takes on a life of its own more powerful than I ever imagined.

Perhaps I got lucky with my first writing group, but the truth is they don’t need me in the slightest. Stories pour out of them that are poignant, hilarious, startling, enlightening. They write with dazzling fluency and surprising confidence once they get going, ­telling stories in ways I’d never have conceived and conjured metaphors that make me jealous.

They bring to the group not just enthusiasm, but eloquence and openness greater than I could have wished. This is never more pronounced or ­profound than when we do a lesson in honest writing.

On a cold night in Shepton I ask my group to trust me enough to write a piece about the thing they are most ashamed of, although I say they do not have to share it. Surprisingly, some do. They tell stories, which I won’t repeat here, so raw, fragile and true, that I feel an alchemy fizz, and I understand something I hadn’t appreciated about teaching – that the job is not so much to instruct but simply to provide a catalyst.

My writers reveal themselves with such tenderness, openness and talent that they teach me how to teach. As the lessons, and weeks pass, I feel ever more grateful to them.

I don’t know if I am a good teacher – you’d have to ask my students, although it feels ridiculous even calling them that. I wouldn’t even be bold enough to claim I am proud of their work because I don’t deserve credit for their exceptional stories, each so powerfully their own. But I do feel a rush when I think that words that once didn’t exist are now in the world, and I am a small part of that.

This week I’ve been obsessed with…

• As my plans to go skiing were melted by Covid, I’m instead making do with après-ski at the cottage, necking schnapps by the fire and ordering fondue and raclette kits from Provisions.
• London Art Fair, starting Thursday April 21, featuring panel talks, performances, and work exhibited by global galleries from artists including Henry Moore, David Hockney, Bridget Riley and Paula Rego.