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Writing like a Drug
Fourty-three consecutive days I posted an article on Medium. Post number fourty three was a gripe about working my ass off and not getting paid, about the blurry boundary between work and hobby which needed redefining with a big, thick, chunky markerpen.
On day fourty four I said “screw this”. Why should I spend 30–60 minutes writing words that will disappear into the black hole of content created on the internet. I’ve written over 350 unique posts and I wondered what the point of it is.
Instead of coming here, I developed a pitch for an article and sent it into The Guardian’s Opinion section. Then I looked for more writing work and found a competition for non-fiction work which closed in 32 hours and had a first prize of £20k and a book deal. The prospect enraptured me, it felt like offering a beer-tasting job to an alcoholic, all I needed to do was write 4,000 words and a book proposal, sleep, and attend a university lecture.
I buried my head in work, writing 800 words, then stopping, deleting and starting again. I worked into the night and started again at 6am. I wrote and wrote and wrote, then went to university for my lecture, before returning home for a final ‘fresh eyes’ edit and submission just 40 minutes before the deadline. It was awesome.
This made me realise that above all else, I adore writing. In the 32 hours leading…
