A Writer's Letter to Father Christmas

Dear Father Christmas,

How's the North Pole? Cold? I bet it is cold.

Before I begin, I just wanted to say that I have always liked you. Even that year you gave me a jigsaw and a science kit while my friends got bikes and computers. Mostly, I like your beard. It makes you look like an overweight Tolstoy in red. Or a regular-size Hemingway. (For Whom the Jingle Bell Tolls? The Old Man and the Sleigh? Ho ho ho…)

Anyway, I have been an incredibly good boy this year. I have finished a novel, drunkenly embarrassed myself at only one literary festival, and got my wasting-life-on-Twitter time down to a healthy 2368 hours.

So with these services to humanity in mind, I wondered if you could please fill my stocking with the following:

- A typewriter. The best writers who ever lived wrote with a typewriter. This is because a typewriter did not have instant access to emails/Facebook/Amazon/videos of cats on skateboards.

- A quill. Failing a typewriter.

- A pen. Failing a typewriter and a quill. Actually, make that 10,000 pens.

- Paper. I never have enough paper, Santa.

- Books. But books I would actually read. So, no celebrity memoirs. No ghost-written novels. Or sports books. Or novelty pocket gimmick books. Or I-never-have-sex-so-I-read-about-it books. I mean good books. The kind people buy because of the words inside, not the hype outside.

- A Kindle. For curiosity's sake. But only after you give me lots of those real books I mentioned. Books with pages that turn yellow and smell like love. Books you can hold and fold and caress and inhale and grow old with. Those books.

- A new desk. My days of writing on a sofa, watching Deal or No Deal are over. Over I say!

- Inspiration. In a jar, if possible.

- A live-in editor.

- A bigger toaster. Chrome-plated.

- Shirts. (Howard Jacobson always wears shirts.)

- A full squad of cheerleaders, to chant encouragement after every single paragraph.

- A neck massage.

- A new dressing gown. (Writer's uniform.)

- Stephen King's stamina.

- A renewed library card. And preferably a library to go with it. 

- Software that eliminates unwieldy metaphors, pretentiousness and 99.9 per cent of adverbs. And which is compatible with the typewriter, obvs.

- An app for book titles. You just enter your novel and it gives you the perfect title. That would be nice.

- Book recommendations I can trust. (I see you as a fan of Scandinavian thrillers, Santa.)

- E L James' debit card and PIN number.

- My next three novels. Edited. Sitting on my desk.

- Books. (I mentioned books, right?)

There, I know you're going to be busy, giving out all those One Direction albums and Game of Thrones box-sets, but if you could give a humble scribe any of these I promise I will reward you in sherry, mince pies and, erm, the Lithuanian edition of my last novel.

                                      Yours sincerely,

                                                              A Writer