Why write?
When I was an undergraduate student of arts at Queen's University Belfast, a lecturer asked in a tutorial, why do we read? I replied: to shock ourselves.
I explained, how one of my favourite books was The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe, which I read in my final year of school as part of A Level English Literature. The Butcher Boy is a dark, horrifying novel, set in 1960s Ireland, in a small town. The novel focuses on Francie, who grows up in an abusive, dysfunctional family. His mother is abused by her alcoholic husband. She often considers suicide and is eventually admitted to a mental health hospital. The story charts Francie’s evolution from schoolboy to killer.
Most people (girls; it was an all-girls grammar school) in my year disliked studying The Butcher Boy. But I loved how on the verge of adulthood - emerging from a pastoral childhood that was deceptively calm and safe in a 2D way - here was the violence of the Irish countryside exposed to extremes. I loved how McCabe was able to create both sympathy and hate for Francie, within me. The novel shocked me. It expanded my way of thinking, and it challenged my neat morals formed in childhood. It was the first time I considered that society perhaps, has as much to answer for, in the formation of the individual and the actions they take.
I and many others, read to enter other lives, to escape and meet ourselves, and to learn.
It’s always seemed a more complex question: why do I write?
At the most basic level, we start to read and write (or not) and how well, or how keenly - generally - based on the time, place and socioeconomic circumstances in which we are born. This is where my enjoyment of reading, and talent for writing, gets interesting. Where I as an individual begin to diverge from the general truths of growing up in a working-class family, in which both my parents left school with no qualifications.
In my small, rural primary school (60 pupils in total), it was remarked around age 5, that I had a much higher reading ability than average. This is something that doesn’t seem to fit well with being diagnosed as dyslexic in my early 20s…again, complex divergence from the norms.
But back to early childhood. By 7, I had a reputation for being exceptionally good at writing fiction; short stories. This talent lent itself to poetry now and again, and eventually and predominantly, journalism, as an adult.
My mother in particular always encouraged my writing talent and often remarked on how talented I was at writing. Even as an adult, when writing opinion articles in the local newspaper that morally upset, shocked and hurt her. She never denied that I was good at the craft of writing.
She once said, that no matter how hard I tried to resist writing. I would always end up writing again, because “some people are born with a gift. You are supposed to write.” She also astutely, commented, that from I was a small child, I seemed to *need* to write. That writing was a way for me to process, to avoid being so overwhelmed by people and day-to-day life. I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic, to 25. But this seems to be the most accurate answer, to the question of why I write. There’s something inside me that compels me, and there’s something inside me that starts to wither up and suffer, if I go too long without writing.
I have taken breaks from writing for many reasons and I can’t see this changing. The reality of being someone who grew up working class and has lived in poverty almost all of my adult life, who is queer and disabled - is that the demands of survival and stabilising, do not always leave me with the right mindset or enough energy, or motivation, to write. Also, as someone who has used writing publicly as a way to process my emotions and develop a sense of self, and who has worked a lot on my mental health, from my mid to late 20s. There are questions of whether I am well enough to write, should I write about this, in this way…
There’s also that I’m pretty suspicious of and often bored, by people who have always and only been writers. Some, have had a very lucky ascent out of the general truths of statistics. They have beaten the odds of their marginalised lives to arrive at linear careers as writers. Others were born into and with significant privileges, that make it so much easier to be a writer, as a fixed and permanent state of being.
For such people, survival has never been and never will be a lived concern.
I am a writer. But I’ve also been a benefit claimant, a barmaid, a care worker...
And the extraordinary experiences that I’ve often used in my 20s, as a way to charm and win the desire or loyalty of middle to upper-class men (sometimes to help with survival such as getting a doctor to support my claim for a disabled travel pass, sometimes for the simple fun of knowing I can): the White House, Israel, Palestine, red brick degrees…
This month, I turned 29. I have my sensible and commonplace aims and desires for the next decade; save enough for a deposit to buy a flat or house, fall in love…
But. I also want to write a lot more than I have & in particular, write a book. I don’t know yet what sort of book or how this newsletter will evolve.
And that’s one of the most invigorating parts of taking breaks from being a writer - returning with renewed enthusiasm, for writing.