What is it with these people?

You can tell I’m feeling a bit better (always a relative term with me). I’m angry.

I have just listened to another of what is fast becoming the latest trend amongst a certain class of successful writer. That is, a long, whining, truly pathetic moan about how much they hate writing, about how difficult it is, about how it is ruining their life.

The answer is simple you gobshites. Give it up. Stop doing it. Find yourself something you enjoy and do that instead. Basically – fuck off out of it and maybe give all those people who enjoy writing a chance. You’ve had all the breaks. You are privileged enough to be making a living from your scribbling. And all you can do is rub everyone else’s noses in the shit by throwing a tantrum a two year old would be ashamed of.

I know writing is hard work. And for the vast majority of writers the pay is poor (if you are lucky enough to get anything at all after agents and publishers have pissed all their profits in the direction of Ama$on and the supermarkets). And sometimes you work on something that turns you inside out because that just has to be done. By all means talk about the difficulties of the craft and how much it takes out of you. But, please, if you don’t enjoy it, keep it to yourself, especially if you are a successful author, because otherwise it makes you look like a precious twat.

So, yes. If you don’t enjoy it, join the dole queue, or feel free to stack shelves in a supermarket, or sweep the streets, work in a call centre, or sit in a factory for eight hours a day with nothing to occupy your thoughts but how you are going to make your minimum wage stretch to rent and food this week. Anything but your obnoxious grizzling.