She's 24 and it's time to retire from the world of exotic dancing, writer Anna Mason tells Steve Pratt.

STRIPPING as an exotic dancer in a Paris nightclub held no fears for Anna Mason. But stepping up to collect a Northern Writers award left the former pupil of Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, Darlington, a bundle of nerves.

Mason is more used to the life of a dancer and glamour model than the literary world. "For me, that sort of thing is so much more nerve-wracking than dancing on stage," she says.

Winning a £500 Northern Promise Support Bursary to attend a residential writing course has given her confidence as a writer and given the chance to finish her first book, based on her experiences living and working in France.

She entered the Northern Writers' awards after picking up a leaflet about them at Darlington Arts Centre while waiting for a friend who was late.

Mason, 24, had already started writing a novel, Papillon 7, based around her experiences of living and working in Paris while dancing in Stringfellows club in the French capital.

"I began writing while it was all fresh in my mind," she says. "I don't think I can write anything I've not had any experience of. Writing from life is a much more real experience.

"People were always asking me about living there. People are nosy about that sort of thing. I started writing a diary about the things that happened to the girls. I didn't really intend to write a book. I was putting down various scenarios and one thing led to another.

"It looks like it will be a fully-formed book now. Something like this award gives you so much encouragement."

Mason, whose family still live in Darlington, contemplated becoming a journalist after completing her studies at Sheffield University in 2001. After a couple of failed job interviews, she decided to try her luck in London, where she signed up with a glamour model agency.

She's honest enough to say that her move into modelling and dancing was financially motivated. "I still had debts from university and danced a little bit to help my overdraft," she explains.

"It was a different world and very competitive in London. They get hundreds of girls who are interested in doing it. I worked in Stringfellows in London, but didn't really like it there.

"They'd just opened the Paris club and I thought, 'Paris, fantastic, and they pay for you to go there'.

"There were a lot of English girls, quite a few Australians, girls from all over the place really. It was just a good time and, for a while, was very popular because strip dance was new. There had only been the cancan before."

Mason and the other dancers lived in a hotel in the Montmartre district. "There were all these personalities with 25 to 30 girls in the hotel. Groups formed and there were girls I got to know better, who I was friends with or who stood out for me, that I wanted to write about," she says.

Mason stayed there for 18 months on and off. She has no qualms about the type of dancing she did at Stringfellows. "It's quite exhausting, especially if you work six nights in a row. It can be quite tiring. But I'm not ashamed or embarrassed about it," she says.

"Dancing can give you confidence and I've met a lot of people I wouldn't have met otherwise. Like any job, it has good points and bad points. It's quite nice not being so self-conscious about what you do.

"There were some great girls there and that's what I wanted to get across in the book. People think it's a profession where girls get taken advantage of and are very vulnerable. That's not the case.

"The girls were using the money for mortgages or French lessons or learning the harp. I'm not saying it's all fantastic. It has an image of being quite a gritty, sleazy business but not where I was."

Now she's busy writing about the adventures of Poppy, Princess, Flame, Robyn and the other girls, she's taking a break from dancing herself. "I'm 24 and need to retire. I feel like it's finished for me," she says.

"It's been interesting, a bit of a journey but I don't want to be doing it any more. Some of the girls there are nearly 30 and don't have anything to show for it apart from coats and shoes. I don't want to get myself in that situation."

She's taken a massage therapy course and is currently training to be a care worker in between completing her novel.

"I'm trying to use my brain a bit more rather than just taking my clothes off," she says.