The Thing About Writing Is… I Didn’t Start Doing It. I Returned To It.
I was going to start this by saying, “the reason I started writing is…”. Until I realised that was a lie. I didn’t suddenly pick up writing. I returned to it. When I decided to start this Substack I promised myself that I’d be honest. So why lie in the first paragraph?
Songs Came Second
Songs have been my focus for the last decade, for sure. But I’ve written stories for much longer – in the same way you might see a little kid self-consciously scribbling exam answers, with an arm curled protectively around the page to hide it. Except in my case, I wasn’t worried about being copied, I was worried that people would think I was a big, dumb idiot.
Because writers are smart. And me? I’m a fraud, a wannabe, someone just absolutely kidding themselves.
That Pesky Inner Voice
Do you have one of those voices? Mine’s loud. It’s the reason it took me until I was 22 to play my first open mic, and until 33 to show someone my first manuscript. (Evidently, I reinvent myself at double digits — stay tuned for 44.)
It’s not that I actually believe I’m stupid. But the hangover version of me? The Sunday-night version? They’ve got doubts. And they are very loud. So in truth, the belief that kept me away from writing for years is an old, boring one: Don’t try, don’t fail.
And what brought me back? Just as banal:
Doubt kills more dreams than failure does.
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Or whatever other eye-roll-inducing shit someone might say to get to you to stop despairing about your silly little dreams.
Melodies Are A Great Place To Hide
I always loved music. Some of my earliest memories are sitting in the back of my Mum’s car and conjuring up scenes to go alongside her Don McLean, Queen, or David Bowie albums.
Later came piano lessons with a sweet old lady named Mrs Lang. She had long nails that clacked against the ivory keys of the ancient upright in her musky-smelling living room. She had a budgie that once escaped mid-lesson and flapped around the room — I remember that better than anything I ever learned in her house.
I didn’t like practicing. I never did my homework. But I loved talking. Making up stories. Writing little songs instead of scales.
So maybe it’s more accurate to say: music wasn’t my first love. Words were. Music was just the safest place I could find to hide them.
Writing Isn’t For Class Clowns
As a teenager, I had one English teacher in particular who praised my writing as “very entertaining”, which only confirmed my suspicion: I wasn’t a writer. Not someone with something to say. I was the class clown.
He encouraged me to enter a school writing competition, so I wrote something.
But the same belief dogged me: writing was for smart people. Serious people. Deep thinkers.
And I? I wasn’t serious. Not smart. Not deep. Just a goofball.
A storyteller, maybe — but not a writer.
So I never sent it in.
Sometimes All It Takes Is A Few Beers
Like any artist with low self-esteem, it took a dear friend – and a few drinks – to give me the push I needed. Usually whenever someone asked if I wrote anything other than lyrics, I lied. However, that night, something took over. It was a sunny summer evening and we were sitting outside a bar at one of those annoying wobbly tables where the legs don’t quite meet the ground. I replied by opening my phone and handing her the latest in a long line of unfinished stories.
“This is great,” she said after a few minutes. “You should finish it.”
So that’s what this Substack is. A place to finish things.
A place to stop pretending that doubt means something. A place to toss that pesky inner voice aside and be goofy, or smart, or serious, or furious — or whatever the fuck else, really. A place to write, without hiding behind anything.
And if you’ve ever stood at the edge of reinvention thinking, Who the fuck do I think I am? — maybe you’re in the right place.