Nicola Sturgeon has revealed she has already started work on her memoir and found it “very therapeutic”, and suggested she could now become a full-time author.

The former first minister said she intended to “see out” the parliamentary term until the 2026 election, but did not commit herself to staying at Holyrood beyond that.

Earlier this week, it emerged Ms Sturgeon had signed a deal to bring out a memoir in 2025 after a nine-way auction by publishers brought her a reported six-figure advance.

Speaking on the Edinburgh Fringe to broadcaster Iain Dale, Ms Sturgeon said she was finding the act of writing helpful as she adjusted to life after Bute House and coped with the “traumatic” fallout from the police probe into the SNP’s finances.

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Both she and her husband, the former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, have been arrested and released without charge since she resigned as FM in February.

Detectives are investigating whether £660,000 raised by the SNP specifically to fight a second referendum campaign was spent on other things.

Ms Sturgeon said: “I am writing a memoir. Ever since I was a wee girl I’ve always loved books and I’ve had this ambition to write a book. I’ve never known whether I would.

“The last few years, I‘ve always thought, when eventually I’m out of this job I will write - I always think memoir is too grand a term - I will write it all down, for therapy apart from anything else.

“And I’ve started that process and it is proving to be very therapeutic. I intend to cover all of the key events that I’ve lived through, that I’ve experienced, that I’ve been part of.

“Of course that will include more recent things as well as things further back in the past, and then we’ll see if anybody wants to read it.”

Asked what she might have done if she hadn’t entered politics, she said she had considered journalism like her late uncle, but now wanted to write.

“I always wanted to write books and maybe that’s what I will do for the rest of my life.”

Ms Sturgeon regularly hosted events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival when FM, while Zoom calls in the pandemic revealed her home’s walls are covered in books. 

One of her close friends is the crime writer Val McDermid.