The truth about being a writer is this: we’re not in it for the money.
I have been a writer my entire career. I left school at 17 to be a writer. When my friends were choosing where they wanted to go to university, I just wanted to be a writer. There were new degrees back then in the early nineties, fancy journalism degrees. But I didn’t want to do that, that was just treading water until I could be a writer.
I got a job working for EMAP, which then owned most of the local newspapers up and down the country, as well as many many magazines. I worked in the advertising production department, just because I wanted to be a writer. I used my annual leave to go and do work experience at my local newspaper, the Peterborough Evening Telegraph. I worked weekends there for free and every Friday afternoon without fail I called the editor and asked if he had any jobs on the trainee scheme. One day, as I was about to replace the telephone receiver, the editor said yes actually, we do have a vacanc…