I Write

Something interesting and exciting happened last week.

I was forced to confront the fact that I’m now a writer.

See, it’s like this. According to English law, I have two jobs: a part-time job in a reprographics/design business…and a part-time job as a freelance writer. The Inland Revenue is fully aware of both vocations, and charges me tax and National Insurance contributions accordingly. I wish they didn’t, but they insist on it.

Time-wise, my part-time jobs are normally in balance. I work 25 hours a week in the printing shop, and then 15-20 hours a week with the writing, using Tuesday to Friday mornings for the bulk of my hours and letting it spill over into my evenings where necessary. And what’s the writing? You can find me working here, here and here and soon you’ll find me blogging in a few other places as well. Just enough work to maintain a useful income, not enough to eat up all my writing time or burn out (again).

And there are two very good, very exciting reasons I need time to write other things. The first is that I’m having some of my writing featured by a high-profile travel writing company (more details when it’s underway), and the second is that I’m working on my first book, a comic novel. This means I need time to travel and travel-write, and I need time to be funny. These are not things that come naturally to me at the moment. They require a bit of a run-up. They require time.

A few weeks back I popped home to look after my Ma, who went in for minor surgery to correct an ailment that has plagued her for the last half-decade. All went well, she’s back home, and her dogs are back from the kennels, chewing up the furniture and teleporting down the beach with happy abandon. A consequence of this was that I had to take a week off work – giving them near-zero notice, and this after I’d just come back from Orkney. So I owed them.

This week just gone, they collected. I did a 35-hour week. Unfortunately, I also had hours and hours of writing to squeeze in there somewhere as well, and all that work was relegated to the evenings: evenings which ended around midnight, so the next day I was a bit sleepy at work, crawled home at the end of the day and fell into bed for an hour, pushing the end of my next evening back to 1.00am…and so on. Problem is, I’m not a terribly speedy writer to begin with, and when I’m tired I slow down even more,  turning a 2 hour job into a real evening-slayer.

But I got there. On Friday night I slept for 11 hours – and still went to bed at 10pm yesterday, yawning so hard I was worried the top of my head might spring off.

It’s a fact, then. I can’t do a full week’s day-work. Legally and spiritually, I am otherwise gainfully employed. It’s time I really faced that. It’s like a doctor’s note at school: “Michael is excused from having to sit through assembly and sing “The Lord is my Shepherd and He makes me Bleat” with everyone else because he’s being paid to play computer games”. It really feels like that. And the hours are deeply subjective. When I’m working on a writing project and it’s engaging enough that I’m immersing my full attention, the hours zip by without a qualm on my part. I actually enjoy going above & beyond (and for that reason, I’m never allowed to bitch about overworking myself as a freelance writer. If you see me heading that way, you’re allowed to rugby-tackle me, figuratively or literally).

Writing – it’s Betty-Ford addictive.

(Starting a piece of writing – well, that’s a different matter. Sometimes those first 5 minutes can take hours).

So there I am. And those of you who have shared my frustration at listening to me saying how I’m going to write this and I’m going to write that, in post after post in this blog’s predecessors…well, these days I’m actually doing it.

And I’m just as surprised as you are.

Image: Markus Rödder