I didn’t let on to any­one that I like to write for twenty-eight and a half years, give or take a few agon­isingly illit­er­ate ones towards the very begin­ning. I didn’t think I was good enough (still don’t) to even sug­gest such a stretch. And yet I wrote. I always wrote. I didn’t save it, I didn’t sub­mit it any­where, I didn’t show it to friends, but if I wasn’t quietly self-destructing through abuse of hal­lu­cino­gens and bad rela­tion­ships, I wrote.

To over­sim­plify in the extreme, there are three kinds of writers (and mul­tiple com­bin­a­tions thereof):

• Those who think they can write because they’re lit­er­ate (not writers)
• Those who just write (writers)
• Those who write, but require external val­id­a­tion to own it (writers or, more hope­fully and pre­cisely, pub­lished authors)

To write you have to insu­late your­self. You can’t read bull­shit opin­ion pieces like this and expect them to val­id­ate your feel­ings on the mat­ter. You have to ignore every­one: friends, lov­ers or oth­er­wise. You have to be insu­lar, but at the same time you can’t afford to dis­con­nect from the world of exper­i­ence — the mad­ness and suf­fer­ing around you — lest your writ­ing turn into a nar­ciss­istic blood­bath (just see my blog). So maybe you cre­ate fil­ters. This does not advance my think­ing, that does. This suits me, this can fuck off.

Judge­ment of worth is a tricky bitch, espe­cially the poor judge­ment you heap on your­self and your out­put without remorse. When you’re high, you think I’m bril­liant, the next [favour­ite fam­ous author]. When you’re low, your best work seems trivial and mundane at best. Who are you to dis­pense justice based on your flighty moods?

Writers are ordin­ary people who write because they must. Because not much of any­thing would make any sense oth­er­wise. The form their writ­ing takes extern­ally means little. Whether it is stashed away under the bed, in a des­ol­ate corner online, or a best-selling paper­back. Who cares? As long as someone reads it and even if no one reads it.

This feels obvi­ous, and yet if someone out­side of you — an agent, a pub­lisher, a lit­er­ary journal — doesn’t val­id­ate your writer­li­ness (it’s a word now, bitch), can you in good con­science call your­self a writer?

Why the fuck not?

If you have the scars to back it up when someone calls it in to ques­tion (and oh, they will) why the fuck not?

I’m a writer because I think and feel in words, because I’m not wholly human unless those fuck­ers are gush­ing from my fin­ger­tips or burn­ing my ret­ina. Because the time spent on other activ­it­ies seems an irre­con­cil­able waste that makes you want to poke your eye out with the nearest sharpened num­ber 2 (or HB to you Brits). Because my eyes and ears and hands, my body parts exist to write. A touch dra­matic per­haps, but you get me.

But mostly it’s because I fuck­ing say so and because, luck­ily, I live in a world where basic needs are fore­gone con­clu­sions and the pur­suit of such things as writ­ing and call­ing your­self a writer becomes possible.

The race for cash or an exist­ence free from work­aday stresses so you can con­cen­trate on writ­ing is laud­able (argu­ably) but ulti­mately sec­ond­ary. There’s pen and paper every­where and if you want to write you just do. You spit on the wall, on your hand, on yel­low post-it notes, laptops, in book mar­gins, on can­vas, on your fore­head, your stu­pid iPhone, pub­lic toi­let doors, in trains, on the soft, sweet bel­lies of the people you’re fuck­ing and their bedsheets.

And well, if you want to pub­lish my self-indulgent novel and sell me a few hun­dred cop­ies and still that’s the proof you need, then pretty for you. But you don’t make me what I am. I don’t even make me what I am.

I’m a writer and this is what I wrote. No more or less mean­ing­less or worth­while than all the shit you do day to day to make your own ordin­ary exist­ence feel less fright­en­ing and lonely.

Ani Smith. Editor of PIFFLE. Writer of Down In Me and Fuguestate. Fuck-up extraordinaire.