LITMIR.BIZ

       INTRODUCTION

      Writing isn’t easy. People sometimes make the mistake of thinking it is. They make the mistake of thinking any old Tom, Dick or Harry can do it. They look at a book or a text message and they think: ‘I could do that.’ In actual fact they are wrong. Throw these twats a pen and a ream of paper and they’d go pale, a lot of them. Because writing is tough as hell.

      Being a writer is, if anything, a curse. Sometimes I’ll spend maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes staring at a blank sheet of paper, my Mitsubishi Uniball Pencil swinging gently above it, clueless as to what I should write. Sometimes, after maybe two hours, perhaps longer, I will rise from my seat and sling my cushion hard against the wall of my study. That’s what it can do to you. It can tear you right up. Then I’ll pick up my swivel chair and smash it down repeatedly on the step next to my French windows. I’ll shout as I do this. Each time I bring it down I’ll yell some kind of grubby obscenity. My hands will be bleeding by this point, like that little twerp from the movie Whiplash, but I won’t care, I’ll just keep smashing my damn chair down with great force until all I’m basically left with is the stem and the wheels. Then I’ll throw that against the French windows. If they smash, they smash. If they don’t, I’ll pick up the stem and the wheels and I’ll go again. If we’re still not making any inroads into the french windows, I’ll take a break. I’ll go and fix myself a coffee, calm down a bit, maybe have a dark chocolate biscuit or some Red Leicester. Then I’ll put on a gardening glove, come back into my study, pick up the stem and the wheels of my swivel chair again, take a huge breath, and then I will make sure it goes through those french windows by any means possible. And when it does I’ll collapse back onto my reindeer-skin rug and I’ll groan.

      Writing is hard. I know there are other jobs that are hard. You probably have one. You’re probably standing there in your fire-fighter’s kit right now, leafing through this with your huge heatproof gloves. A cup of coffee on the go, sucking up some verse in between the blazes. I have the utmost respect for your kind. I wouldn’t run into a burning house for all the tea in China. In fact, the merest whiff of smoke and I’m out, off running the other way. Stood in the street in my dressing gown, cheering you brave boys on from the sidelines. And it’s not just you. I could name ten jobs which are universally accepted as being harder than what I do for a living. Paramedic springs to mind. Top chefs constantly tell us about the stress they go through. ‘It’s not all about dunking our fingers in sauces and checking they’re salty enough,’ they say. Then there are things like teachers, trawlermen and florists. Farmers even like to get involved in the debate. The early mornings. The squeeze they feel from the supermarkets. The challenge of staying on top of personal hygiene. Everyone has it tough, I appreciate. But as tough as me? Mmm, that I doubt.

      To conjure words from the ether. To lay them down in the right order. To ensure they are original. That they make sense. The constant worry that what you are writing down might be gobbledygook. It’s a huge weight we bear on our shoulders. It’s a measure of how stressful our job is that a lot of us writers have a stress ball on our desk. I’ve had mine for years. I prod it when I’m looking for an adjective. In my darker times I have been known to squeeze it so hard that whatever gloop is contained within has dripped onto my parchment. When I have a deadline, I draw out my craft knife and I stab the stress ball with one hand whilst I type frantically with the other. Show me the equivalent of that sorry little tale within the fire-fighting world. In truth, you won’t be able to.

      Not that I am complaining. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am happy to be a poet. I know that in spite of the difficulties, in spite of the bruises, the sorrow, if I was to jettison this life and set out on a different calling I would fall at the first hurdle. I wouldn’t last five minutes in a bakery, an aquarium, a war zone, a circus or any other workplace you care to throw into the hat. Because I am a poet. For all the horseshit that comes with it, that is the truth of it and something which I cannot, will not, deny. I am a poet, and a bloody important one. And I know I must plough on. And hope that at some stage it monetises.