THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM
It's not a biscuit, it's an identity crisis
Some writers will tell you that everything you do as a writer is writing. Looking out of the window is writing, they say. Going for a walk is writing. Eating an entire packet of Jaffa Cakes is writing.
I think writers say this sort of thing because they like to give the impression that they are permanently operating at a more lofty and ethereal level – that their social media scrolling and biscuit consumption are important elements of their creative process. An ordinary person eating biscuits is terribly dull and unworthy of mention. But when a writer does it, it’s part of the complex and subtle stuff of human existence that they are weaving into their stories with their genius minds.
A cynic might note that this sounds like an excuse to eat more biscuits. But I am no cynic. And I know what the writers among you are thinking. You’re thinking, Jaffa Cakes aren’t even biscuits, you stupid cow. The clue is in the name.
Well, much the same could be said of writers.
A writer writes, they say. But of course, we know from all the window-gazing people that this isn’t strictly true. Is a non-writing writer still a writer? Is a writer with writer’s block a writer? It would seem so, given that a non-writer can’t get writer’s block. But if a writer doesn’t have to write to be a writer, what actually makes them a writer? Is everyone a writer, whether they like it or not?
I’ll tell you one person who definitely is not a writer, and that’s me. Which is a weird thing to… write. And it’s an even weirder thing to tell writers. Because no one ever admits to giving up on writing. If you do, you are told that you can’t give up, that you don’t really mean it, that you’ll come back to it, and any other permutation of LA LA LA LA LA SHUT UP YOU’RE SCARING ME.
Writers believe that being a writer is an immutable innate identity - one that these days also comes with a full set of fashionable ideologies and even some designated hairstyles. Writing is not something you do or don’t do. It’s who you are. It’s in the blood. Stab me and I bleed ink, they say. Literally all of them say that.
Side note: don’t stab a writer to test this theory, no matter how tempted you are. It may be understandable, but it’s not legal. Also, do not write a short story in which a writer’s blood turns out to be ink. And also do not write a story about a writer who stabs other writers and writes stories with their blood. These last two things are not illegal, but they are extremely fucking annoying.
Despite everyone agreeing that publishing is corrupt to the core, that there’s zero money in it, and that you’re constantly rejected and widely despised, it seems like no one in this business ever just calls it a day. How often do you hear someone say that they’re an ex-writer turned full-time biscuit eater? That they gave up on the shit bits of writing and embraced the fun bits, like looking out of windows and pretending to be too busy to hoover the stairs?
Well, I did. I quit. I no longer identify as a writer.
For most of my life, being a writer was my whole thing. It’s who I am, I said. If you stab me, I bleed ink, I said. Look at my stupid hair, I said. And if I didn’t write, I went a bit mad. I’d often take a long break from writing (although writers don’t call it a ‘break’; they call it ‘writer’s block’ and cry about it) but after a while, I would start getting more and more unhinged and insane until I found myself hunched over my laptop at four in the morning in a mental frenzy, typing out forty different lyrical descriptions of the sound of the moon weeping.
Looking back, I think these could probably be classed as manic episodes. It makes me wonder if I was ever truly a writer at all. Maybe it was just really bad PMS.
The truth is that I tried and failed at writing. I published a few books, got nominated for a few very minor awards, and spectacularly failed to achieve anything resembling ‘making a living.’ I sacrificed sleep and relationships and careers and opportunities and health because I put everything into my dream of making it as a writer. And I didn’t make it. So I gave up.
For some reason, writers aren’t allowed to do that. Some would even say that the very act of quitting proves I was never really a writer in the first place. To those people I’d say, maybe it just proves that I should have been born to rich parents, or at least married someone with a good job in a bank, so I could noodle around not really worrying about the price of Jaffa Cakes and window cleaning and devoting my entire existence to something desperately unpopular and unremunerative, like you.
Of course, I still write quite a lot. More than ever, really. Which you could be forgiven for thinking makes me a writer. But you’d be wrong, because I’m definitely not one. Look, if a biscuit-eating window-gazer is a writer, then a person who writes can be whatever they want. If not-writing is writing, then writing can be not-writing. It’s only fair.
Kafka said that a non-writing writer was a monster courting insanity. I say, show me a writer who says that looking out of the window is writing and I’ll show you a person trying to get out of doing the hoovering. (And it is a biscuit.)
Exactly.
No one wants the truth.
They want the want.
It's a cake and I will duel you on the matter, window-gazer.