Ques­tion: when someone sug­gests that you should write for a liv­ing, is the most appro­pri­ate response always to blush and feel extremely flattered?

Answer: no.

A num­ber of acquaint­ances have said these or sim­ilar warm words to me without ever hav­ing read a single sen­tence I’ve writ­ten — prob­ably a for­tu­nate escape for them, since they don’t bear the res­ult­ing men­tal scars and remain bliss­fully free from con­cerns about my psy­cho­lo­gical well-being. They are merely aware that I hap­pen to favour spend­ing my days in near sol­it­ary con­fine­ment, bash­ing away at a key­board, trans­fixed by the cool glow of the laptop’s screen, and occa­sion­ally paus­ing to sit back and look suit­ably pens­ive as I rumin­ate on the great work of art I am cre­at­ing. Like all writers do, of course. (Note to self: must get foun­tain pen to suck thoughtfully.)

In one case, how­ever, I believe that the advice to ‘take up thy thesaurus and write’ was offered out of a mis­taken belief that I simply couldn’t do any­thing else — that this was the only option avail­able for someone in my position.

In 2006, I became phys­ic­ally dis­abled when my right leg was ampu­tated just above the knee. After two weeks in hos­pital — spent bedrid­den, entirely stup­i­fied and exper­i­en­cing crazed hal­lu­cin­a­tions due to being admin­istered indus­trial quant­it­ies of hard­core med­ic­a­tion — I met the physio­ther­ap­ist who would be lead­ing my rehab­il­it­a­tion: a six foot tall, hard-faced, mean-spirited brick shit­house of a woman, with hair that appeared to have been wel­ded to her head in the shape of a Ger­man army hel­met, and a face like a smacked bull­dog chew­ing a wasp. I took an instant dis­like to her. Over the com­ing months of insti­tu­tion­al­ised care, that instant dis­like would turn into obsess­ive, unhinged hatred.

Dur­ing our ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion, she attemp­ted to find out a little about my back­ground, about who I was before The Tra­gic Event That Struck Me Down So Tra­gic­ally In The Most Tra­gic Of Ways. She seemed dis­ap­poin­ted when I was unable to reveal a glor­i­ously act­ive life­style as an ama­teur pole vault­ing cham­pion, a week­end bun­gee jumper or a part-time jungle adven­turer, who now — “des­pite my dis­ab­il­ity” — har­boured ambi­tions to indulge in acts of heroic but utterly futile bravado such as run­ning the Lon­don Mara­thon or hop­ping across the United States on my one remain­ing leg. I did, how­ever, tell her that I was a keen writer.

Bad move.

This physio­ther­ap­ist was from the ‘old school’. She was obvi­ously a firm believer in the med­ical rather than the social model of dis­ab­il­ity. By her reck­on­ing, since I was now dis­abled I was also com­pletely use­less. I was going to be a bur­den on the state, I wouldn’t be able to func­tion inde­pend­ently or look after myself for the rest of my life, and I could for­get any fond ideas about return­ing to work. Her cold and clin­ical tick-box plan was to get me out of hos­pital into a res­id­en­tial home for some six to eight months, where I would con­tinue to receive physio­ther­apy and rehab­il­it­a­tion until such a time as suit­ably adap­ted, pos­sibly even sheltered, accom­mod­a­tion was found for me. Or I rot­ted away and became com­pletely insti­tu­tion­al­ised. Whichever happened sooner.

“But at least you can write. You said that you enjoy writ­ing. So you could be a writer.”

I can’t recall if those were her exact words, but they were cer­tainly the sum total of the crumbs of com­fort she tossed my way, as she sat oppos­ite me and impa­tiently rustled my patient records a few inches from my face. She was slowly chew­ing some gum — a favour­ite habit of hers — using the same rather tent­at­ive man­ner of mas­tic­a­tion you might employ if you were eat­ing the head of a dead baby, and this action only served to accen­tu­ate her dis­missive, sneer­ing expres­sion. Make no mis­take, this wasn’t a recom­mend­a­tion borne out of some recog­ni­tion of my aston­ish­ing lit­er­ary genius, but rather because if I couldn’t do any­thing with a life that had now been rendered utterly pathetic in her eyes, I could at least sit on my arse all day and write.

Sadly, this assump­tion isn’t as rare or as far-fetched as you might think. Both before and since join­ing the ranks of the slightly wobbly, I have heard numer­ous tales from dis­abled people of being told that they should try writ­ing — if not as a career option, then at least as some­thing to do instead of appar­ently spend­ing each day watch­ing cook­ery pro­grammes on day­time TV whilst drain­ing the mea­gre cof­fers of the wel­fare sys­tem (which is what all dis­abled people do, or so the more sen­sa­tion­al­ist corners of the right-wing press would have you believe). Such wis­dom is often dished out by occu­pa­tional ther­ap­ists and well-meaning coun­sel­lors, and is given even if their cli­ent has never voiced a burn­ing desire to pur­sue a lit­er­ary life.

Two and a half years later, I am not an undue bur­den on the state, I func­tion inde­pend­ently and look after myself. I also hold down a busy full-time job. You may, how­ever, deduce your own bit­ter irony from the fact that right now I would like to do noth­ing more than to sit on my arse all day and write.

As I state that desire here in black and white for all to see, I can almost feel my bête noire physio­ther­ap­ist smirk­ing at me, grimly triumphant.

So if you’re won­der­ing how on earth you’re ever going to be able to find the time and space to ded­ic­ate your­self to writ­ing, here’s my advice. First, get a felt tip pen and draw a dot­ted line around one of your legs. Just above the knee is good. Next, open a bottle of vodka and knock back the entire con­tents as quickly as humanly pos­sible. Finally, grit your teeth and get a help­ful friend to launch into your limb with a chain­saw. You might want to book ahead for your appoint­ment with the physio­ther­ap­ist though, as the wait­ing lists can get quite long.

Vaughan Simons has a pros­thetic leg, but he doesn’t like to talk about it. Much. He calls him­self the Editor of Writers’ Bloc, writes online as An Unre­li­able Wit­ness, is a con­trib­utor to PIFFLE, and throws his other words and web detritus on Unre­li­ably Wit­nessed. He’s also appeared in The Cor­duroy Mtn. His desire is to give up work and eke out the rest of his days as a feck­less (dis­abled) wastrel with a nasty word habit.