How to become a writer

An inefficient guide in seven simple steps

Step 1: Write

Begin as a child and write everything you can turn your mind to. Write rhymes. Write songs. Write captions for the cereal box characters. Turn them into comic strips. Write and illustrate a full-length novel inspired by your favourite Roald Dahl characters, fold and staple it meticulously into a booklet, spend hours drawing the cover by hand. Ask you friends for puff quotes and add them to the back page. Do your homework and hand it in on time.

Step 2: Stop Writing

Ideally, encounter one or all of the following:

• an unsupportive teacher who accuses you of plagiarism

• an overbearing parent who claims your talent as theirs

• a new frenemy who reads your latest piece out to the whole class at breaktime and leads everyone in mocking

Step 3: Don’t Write

Do. Not. Write.

Step 4: You Are Not A Writer

Letters don’t count. Copywriting doesn’t count. That brilliant pitch you wrote for work that your boss took to the board and didn’t give your credit for DEFINITELY doesn’t count.

Late-night poetry picked out in fridge magnets whilst the kettle boils for your last cup of tea and the tap drips and the neighbours’ porch light flickers on and off with every dark nocturnal creature that creeps across their lawn doesn’t count. You are not a writer. You will never be a writer. You DO NOT write.

Step 5: Fuck it all up

Ideally, pull off one or all of the following:

• break up your most significant relationship/lose touch with your friends/become estranged from your parents and siblings

• quit your job, or don’t quit your job, realise all your work is meaningless and nothing you say or do makes a difference to anyone or anything in the world

• parenthood

Most importantly: blame yourself. You are responsible for 100% of your failures and your successes are basically all luck/a mistake. Remember: everything is your fault.

Step 6: Write

Start a journal. Write one page every morning, and every night, before bed, write something you’re grateful for that day.

Start a blog. Hate everything about it. Hate that it’s imperfect. Hate that it’s not Dickinson, or Du Maurier, or Spark. Hate that it’s still the first Google result when you search on your name. You are STILL NOT a writer. IT DOESN’T COUNT.

Step 7: Keep Writing

Stop caring. Or try to stop caring. Get out of your own way. Write crap. Don’t write anything for weeks because you’re just barely keeping on top of all the other responsibilities you’re supposed to take care of like keeping your kids alive, remembering to say hi to your partner once in a while, or showing up for your actual bloody job, or going to the fucking gym which nobody told you you have to keep doing over and over and honestly if you’d known it was such an unending pain in the ass when you signed up you definitely wouldn’t have but you have to keep going because moving your body three times a week is about the only thing that stops you losing your mind completely.

Lose your mind completely.

Lose track of where you were up to. Have brilliant ideas whilst you’re driving to work and forget every detail by the time you get home except you feel like it was something to do with the symbology of trees maybe?

KEEP WRITING.

Write when you can. Write at night, write at work when you’re meant to be compiling a competitor report, write whilst your baby is napping and try to pretend you don’t hear her for ten minutes when she wakes up because you feel like you’re just on the cusp of honing something perfect but give up and go to her anyway.

Write for an hour, for six hours, for ten minutes whilst your partner finishes bath time with the kids and you have to put on noise-cancelling headphones so you can’t hear the screaming as they try to brush their teeth, I mean seriously, when did tooth-brushing become an international human rights event? Set a timer and turn off the wifi. Do nothing else. Just write.

And maybe, just maybe, write something that perhaps isn’t total crap.

Immediately hide it away so that nobody sees it. Bury it in an obscure filing structure. Better yet, stick it on a USB drive and hide it at the back of your sock drawer. Do not speak of it or even think of it for at least six months. Then, finally, in a fit of hubris, gather up the courage to show it to someone whose opinion matters and try not to vomit when they give you their feedback.

Ignore their feedback.

Submit to a publication. Get rejected by form letter. KEEP WRITING.

Submit to a competition. Get shortlisted. Lose. KEEP WRITING.

Publish something yourself online. Receive some lovely comments. Receive some hateful comments. KEEP WRITING.

KEEP WRITING.

KEEP WRITING.

KEEP WRITING.