A writer’s life is often considered to be a life of ease. Apparently there was a survey last year of the British public, and following on from ‘professional footballer’ as the most favoured profession, writer came second. I think somewhere there must be a viewpoint that a writer rises late (he would have to following the quantity of alcohol consumed at last night’s lavish launch party, surrounded by adoring fellow celebrities, the red carpet rolled out, assistants and attendants on hand to cater to every whim), and while fielding telephone calls from Hollywood producers vying for movie rights, both Alan Yentob and Melvyn Bragg offering ever-increasing quantities of money to feature in a prime-time documentary, our writer would breakfast on scallops and quails’ eggs, smoke a packet of Lucky Strikes, down three cups of Blue Mountain hand-ground coffee, and then type a handful of words on his battered Underwood or Remington before retiring to the club for an afternoon of witty repartee and fine cigars with the likes of Sebastian Faulks and Ian McEwan. Sorry to have to let you down, but a writer’s life is not quite this way. I think it was Gideon Flowers who said that ‘Writing is easy…all you have to do is stare at a blank page until drops of blood form on your forehead.’ Leo Rosten said that ‘The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can't help it.’ As Bennett Cerf so astutely observed: ‘Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire, and then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer--and if so, why?’ Of course, once you attain that lofty position of having been published at all, it then becomes a full-time job to stay there. Writing is a competitive business, to say the least. Apparently only two percent of books published are bestsellers. Over eighty percent of books published in the UK sell less than five hundred copies. The average working writer in the UK draws a salary from his writing of less than seven thousand pounds. This, my friends, is not the level of independent income that will provide scallops and quails’ eggs for breakfast. So why do people do it? Russell Baker said ‘The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.’ A nice idea, but – frankly – utterly untrue. Writing is a job of work, and for those few that generate enough income from their writing that they can survive without extra-curricular activity (like a full-time job), then the discipline necessary to get out of bed and write three thousand words a day can test even the hardiest literary animals.