My 'Journey'

I am scared. You see, next week I have been asked to do something I have never done before. I have been asked to give a lecture to students - real breathing undergraduates at York St John University - on creative writing. I have never done this before. I have always believed of all the subjects to teach, creative writing might be the hardest.

'What should I talk about?' I asked.

'You. Your experience. How you got here. Why you are a writer. People love to hear from real writers.'

Do they? Then they are weird. Couldn't I just talk about something simple like quantum physics instead? The last thing anyone should want to hear about is a writer. In the Hundred Acre Wood that is life, we are the perpetual Eeyores, braying cynicism from our Gloomy Places, continually looking for our tails/tales. Leave us alone. Go and have fun with Christopher Robin. Go on. Go. Skidaddle.

But it got me thinking. Everyone likes an origin story, don't they? Just ask the X-Men. Or the X-Factor, for that matter. So, what have I learnt? What would I have done differently? What was - to use that worst phrase ever - 'my journey'.

Let's give it a try. This is how to be a writer, from my own perspective:

Be born in 1975. (This used to seem a pretty cool year to be born in, back when mobile phones were an urban myth and policemen were old. Increasingly less so. You might want to try something newer, like 1987 or 1996.)

Grow up in a town where the most interesting thing that ever happened was that a Victorian Prime Minister once gave a speech in its market square.

Don't fit in at school.

Stare at the car window in the rain, as the water drops streak across the glass.

Daydream.

Have your Nan come and live with you and take you on forest walks. Write lots of stories about a cowboy called Jake.

Believe in Father Christmas until puberty.

Sleepwalk while on a school trip to the Peak District. Be slightly too middle class for your state school. Have moles on your face that the girl you fancy more than any other picks on you about. Never tell your friends what you do on Saturday nights (you go to the theatre with your parents).

Have the kind of face that causes people to say 'Smile, it might never happen' and 'Wake up, Matthew' a lot.

Read Stephen King, S E Hinton, Jeanette Winterson, Bret Easton Ellis. Hang out at the library. Feel stigmatised when Mrs Bamber says you might need to be in special needs because of your messy colour wheel. Get a mystery bug that means you can't eat solid food for two months.

Be a temporary goth.

Get a boil on your nose.

Be tall, but very skinny, before being a boy and being skinny is fashionable.

Kiss Jenny Shepherd on the roof terrace of her father's pub. Feel the mad intensity of unrequited love.

Get stopped by the town thugs on the way back from a disco and narrowly escape death-by-baseball bat.

Get the best dog in the world.

Watch the Breakfast Club 458 times.

Dye your hair custard yellow with the aid of Sun-In Spray.

Be mesmerised by Victoria Wood live in concert.

Have great chats with your sister.

Write terrible poems. Discover alcohol. Seriously mess up A Level French. Stop speaking for days when the Nan you once lived with dies.

Go to university. Study European Studies for no better reason than you like Europe. Change to English and History. Walk in the rain a lot. Have no ambition. Read the classics, do surprisingly well at your History of Art module. Imagine mushroom clouds on the horizon. Fall in love with the woman you will one day marry.

Write her poems all the time. Lose contact with your old friends.

Get into debt.

Drink a lot.

Have wild adventures.

Go travelling.

Drift.

Put off having a job.

Do an MA in English Literature. Read Derrida and Baudrillard. Do a dissertation on Byron. Wonder what the hell you are going to do with your life? Pitch pretentious articles to magazines. Get knock-back after knock-back. Live in London. Get a job at a wine shop in Pimlico, delivering crates of champagne to Random House publishers. Feel jealous of Alex Garland and David Mitchell.

Clouds are gathering so head to the light.  Go to Spain and live in the middle of nowhere trying not to realise you will have to return and get a job.

Go for a meal with friends and realise you cannot speak. Your tongue is locked. Words are miles away.

Speaking feels impossible.

Have a breakdown.

Go back to live with your parents.

Get a knowledge of the human mind that you never asked for.

Be taken to the all-male production of Swan Lake and have to leave, sweating, palpitating, convinced you are insane.

Read a book. The words mean nothing. Feel like Hamlet in act two, scene two. Have your girlfriend - the only one you could marry - force you to start writing.

Have an idea for a story. An alien comes to earth in human form, hates the humans, then learns to love them. It is really the story of a breakdown, and of coming to terms with the world. But it is too big an idea for you right now, requires too much confidence, so you write a small story about a family from the perspective of the family dog.

Get an agent. Feel better. Then, a year later, you get a publisher. There is a very awkward handshake that takes place during your first meeting. Your entire relation to the publishing industry will be defined by that handshake.

Be happy. Or be something that feels very much like happiness. It is 2003. It has taken this long to realise you are a writer, but the glove fits well.

Realise it is better to feel and fear than be numb and oblivious. So you look at life, and you spend the next ten years searching for deep and helpful truths in the only place they can be truly be found - in fiction. You realise Eeyore has a rich and wondrous interior life.

There.

Lecture over. Go away and read.

It's not a blueprint. There are many roads to the same place.

Find your own way. Misery is just happiness that hasn't come to fruition. Never fit in. Read and write and love and feel.

Adieu. See you next week.