Why I'm not giving up the day-job

As part of our youth focus, young adult author Sarah Mussi reflects on how her job as a teacher in inner city South London helps to inspire her work - including her latest book Angel Dust

Like a lot of writers I’ve got a day-job. And like the rest of us, I dream of a time when I can just be a creative artist. A time when I will immerse myself in my art… I will become famous and rich. I will make enough money to pay the bills. I’ll sit on a shady veranda (probably attached to a (deluxe) shed studio, at the bottom of a garden country estate), overlooking lawns (lakes even) and a delightful tangle of roses and honeysuckle… Rounded hills in the distance will etch a dramatic horizon against an ever-blue sky…

Sound familiar? Enchanting?

Practical? Realistic?

Not likely.

Even if I make millions, I’m not giving up the day-job.

You see, I’m a teacher in inner city South London. And whilst I still dream about a rural setting and a quiet pace of life where I can be a full-time writer, I know once I’ve got that cosy thatched roof over my head, I won’t be writing anything worth reading.

How so?

Well one famous writer (Samuel Johnson) before me said: ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’. And I’d add to that : when a writer is tired of the young, she is tired of youth. And if that’s the case, then how the heck are you going to write for them?

 So when people ask me about the day job, like ‘What do you teach?’ - even though I teach English (I love English - literature and language), I always answer I teach kids. You see, for me that is the thing. I don’t teach a subject. I’m not a dry academic. I teach young minds to think and to question. I teach them to express their understanding, and in doing that I keep my mind young. I keep myself thinking and questioning. It keeps my game up to the mark. Because I also need to keep looking for new and better ways to express myself. And that’s how I came to write Angel Dust.

Let me tell you about it. You see in Key Stage 4 in every GCSE syllabus there is a mandatory requirement to study Shakespeare. And as Macbeth was bagged long ago by Key Stage 3, the most popular play for young adults is Romeo and Juliet. Now I personally think R&J is fantastic and I love discussing the age old problems of youth fighting in the streets and young people falling in love for the first time and parents who try to impose their will on the next generation, but after you’ve taught it, year in an year out, for a good number of years and seen the Zeffirelli film and the Leonardo DiCaprio one too - and all that stuff (zillions of times) you kind of get the script off by heart. And that’s when you have to get creative. And it was in trying to get young adults to transpose those issues creatively into what affects them now, today, that a good deal of Angel Dust, its themes and characters, were born.

Marcus is obviously a Montague and like Romeo he’s out there on the streets struggling to do the right thing and getting caught up in exactly the opposite. Serafina is like Juliet trapped in being ‘good’ trying to obey a powerful father (God, you can’t get much more powerful than that) wanting to break the rules and terrified of the consequences. You get the idea. The youngsters in my class wanted to discuss, the post-code gang problem, the first-love problem, the parent issue. They wanted to discuss religion too – the Friar in R&J what exactly was his role? And I listened to all this closely. V-e-r-y closely.

So whilst having a day-job is certainly tiring, and living in Brixton isn’t always good for your health, I wouldn’t change a thing. Working with young people when you write for young adults is such a gift. Yes, it can be challenging, but at times it can be deeply rewarding, but most of all it gives you a sense of being there: ‘down with crew’, in touch with the ‘now’ and on the brink of the future.

So roll on traffic jams, roll on dodgy betting shops, roll on crowded inner-city estates – gimme the rough-tough city, gimme the kids of today – because inside all that there is gold to be mined: the gold of stories, dark, unsettling, urgent. And I want to be the one to tell them.