JanFeb2020

34 | www.westendermagazine.com
mechanic called Cat who all the boys fancied
which I now think is hilarious but I didn’t start
writing until later when, on a whim, I entered
a short story writing competition where there
were hundreds of entries and I won it. I won
£1000.
I was like, well, if I managed to do that,
with this little story that I just kind of fired off,
then maybe there is actually something here.
And by that time, in my late twenties, I was
living in London, had a stable partner, I had
a different view of myself and the world, I’d
already worked my way up the charity sector,
so that’s when I started thinking that actually
writing was something that maybe I could do.
Do you think there’s enough working class
writers being published?
No. For three reasons. One is all the practical
barriers: making any money from writing
is extremely hard. The Society of Authors
said that in 2017/18, the average wage for
a professional writer was £10,700 and that
takes into account everyone from bestsellers
to people who publish one book for a modest
advance but that’s obviously not enough to
live on. It’s also a time consuming job so it’s
not as possible as it used to be to have a full
time job and then write in the evenings.
There’s also psychological barriers.
You can’t be it if you can’t see it so if you
don’t have any role models, if you haven’t
read books that reflect your world or if, like
me, you didn’t understand where books
came from for a long time…
The third one is that for years,
the publishing industry has been based
on people riding up the ranks by doing,
not one but often many unpaid internships
and obviously it’s London based so
the people who can afford to do those
internships either have to have three jobs
which means that often they just get too tired
and can’t do it anymore or they have wealthy
parents. I will say, except for the money thing,
things are slightly changing; there are more
working class writers than there have been
previously and the publishing industry has
realised that it needs to make changes.
What advice would you offer to someone
who is creative but struggles to see how
they might channel it?
I’d say persist. I meet so many writers who
say they can’t afford to do an MA and I
always say you don’t need those things.
What you need for writing is actually very
simple: it’s yourself and something to write
with. At the early stage of writing don’t think
about whether you’ll get published or what
the reviews might be like because that’s so
far down the line and actually, the actual
process of the writing is the nicest thing you
can give yourself. Afterwards you can worry
about those things.
Is there a book you’ve read later as an
adult that you would recommend to your
younger self?
Janice Galloway’s This is Not About Me.
I hadn’t read Janice Galloway before I wrote
my first book. But I often think if I had,
I wouldn’t have bothered, you know? (laughs)
It’s so important as a young person to see
your experience of life reflected back at you
because it makes you feel real and helps you
understand why things are the way they are.
What does the word ‘home’ mean to you?
I guess I associate home with Peter. We are
moving in the New Year to Leipzig. That will
be our third move in two years. Partly to
escape Brexit and also because we want to
have more time and creativity in our lives and
that’s hard in London because you’re always
working so hard for your money. So I guess
for me it’s about contentment and peace.
As long as I can write somewhere, and
Peter is there then that is home. One of the
benefits of having this super chaotic nomadic
childhood is that it made me adaptable. I can
put a rucksack down somewhere and in five
hours I think this feels like home.
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