Me, Writing, in 2017

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Why do I write?

That’s a question I’ve been asked more than once. It is after all a big reach to suggest that I’ll ever make a large amount of cash from it, so given all the time and effort it takes – why bother?

The answer is, simply, because I absolutely love doing it.

And that’s all really that you can ask for: that what you’re devoting your time to actually gives you pleasure and makes you feel good.

I’m working so hard at the moment, trying to get to a distant point where I sell enough books I can just focus full time on writing. My dream is to spend all day, every day focusing on my family and my writing – the things most important to me. But even with that ambition, I couldn’t do all this – the writing in the morning before work, writing at lunchtime and writing in the evening – if I wasn’t actually getting intense satisfaction from it. Every moment I spend writing – even if that day’s work turns out to be one of stinking crap; where I can’t find the words I need – is a day I have enjoyed.

It’s my passion, my drug, my calling.

Maybe I’ll never be able to sell enough books to leave work, or maybe this will be a twenty-year project with lots of frustrations along the way, but as long as I am still loving it then I will keep going with it. Scribbling in my notepads, pounding my word-processor, juggling a dozen short stories, novellas and novels at any one time.

The reason I write is that giving realisation to those stories and ideas that spin around my head just makes me so happy. The process itself is one I tremendously enjoy. And that’s without even getting to that moment of ultimate, supreme glee when I actually finish something and think: “Yep! I’m proud of that!”