How The Times Makes Me Feel Inferior

For the longest time I've known I'll be a writer. Not known I've wanted to be, but known I will be. Whether that ends up being restricted to writing my lonely little blog for the rest of time or writing a best-selling novel, it's in my blood to write.

I read an article today that touched upon one of my greatest concerns and insecurities as a hopeful writer. In The Sunday Times' Culture magazine today is an article about American humourist and writer, David Sedaris. It informed me that after being kicked out of his home for being gay, David has since been a crystal meth addict, a cleaner, delivery man and artist, and has lived in Chicago, New York and Paris.

The problem is that I've only spent a total of five days in Paris and the closest I've come to a drug addiction is taking too many Pro Plus once when I was 16.

Writing is all about observing, deciphering and relaying the external. So surely it shouldn't matter how interesting the writer's life is. But I've always had an internal battle between wanting to be a writer with really interesting stories to tell and points of view that can only be established through great adventures and stimulating company, and my desire to crawl into bed and live vicariously through more interesting people in books and on television.

The world stirs an unrelenting curiosity in me, as do people. But how much of it do I miss by living within my comfort zone? Some of my favourite writers and books talk about a range from mildly odd circumstances to plain weird, yet it's the narrative that makes them great. Jon Ronson's Out of the Ordinary is the perfect example of this and stands as one of my biggest inspirations.

There are great writers who tell extraordinary tales that could only be inspired from living extraordinary lives, and there are writers who have to use their imaginations a bit more. I've only ever lived in England, in houses, and I'm inherently an ordinary person who gets her excitement from things others wouldn't batter an eyelid at.

But there's an art to taking the mundane and using your mind to make it exciting. I have a very vanilla life, but I aspire to embrace this whilst producing work that's chocolate, with chocolate chips and caramel sauce. At least this way I can still be in bed by 12. Who am I kidding - 10.