There are a number of things Varsity probably didn’t account for when they asked me to write a column: the amount of endorsement they’d be giving McVitie’s, for a start, and the frequency with which I’d talk about wanking, or use words like ‘wanking’, as well as my bouts of narcissism.

In the spirit of keeping you all (and them) on your toes, then, today’s bit of writing will be about writing.

You heard me. Hold onto your hats – we’re going meta.

I would like to pretend that a lot of consideration goes into choosing what my columns are going to be about, that I aim to be topical and current, that I trawl the news in search of something I can really sink my teeth into. The reality is there’s no method to it at all. The closest I got to being topical was when it was my birthday, so I wrote a column about my birthday. I take the fact that my column about women in comedy happened to land on the same week as the Footlights Lady Smoker as proof that, if there is a God, I’m one of his special people.

“The best thing about being a writer is that it’s not something you have to ask permission for”

So, after staring at a wall for a solid 15 minutes (already maxing out on my attention span), I decided that I’ve got to write something, so it might as well be about writing.

There’s a good line in Scroobius Pip’s classic belter of a tune, ‘Let ’Em Come’. The hook ends, Pip’s just laid down some serious lyrics about how he’s not going to submit to a lifetime in an office and something else about a ‘death drum’. It breaks down, a low beat, and Pip goes:

“I see so many kids that love being writers more than they love writing.”

Heavy stuff.

Pip has a point. The best thing about being a writer is that it’s not something you have to ask permission for. You don’t have to go to an interview, you don’t have to own a tweed jacket and talk like Alan Bennett, you don’t need a typewriter, characterful face or opium problem.

You do need to write, and that’s easier said than done. Once you start doing it, though, whether you’re being paid or not, whether you’re writing the next great epic, poems on napkins, epigrams in spray paint, plays, novels, or short stories – you can call yourself a writer. It’s that simple. You write, you’re a writer.

The important thing is to force yourself to do it. Stare at the wall if you need to, but write something. Anything. It could be the worst thing anyone’s ever written. (When I was 10 I wrote a 16-page story about a gang of woodland animals fighting the forces of evil. It was essentially a huge rip-off of Redwall, but I’d gotten really into American young adult fiction, so all the mice said ‘freaking’ far too often.) But get it down, and scrap it, rewrite it, hate it, think it’s brilliant and then accept that it will never feel finished.

Big Mouth: How to be ‘Cool’

Which brings me to my last point: nick everything. Steal shamelessly, but make it your own. There is no such thing as ‘original’. There’s fresh, exciting, surprising, raw and inventive, but we’re still telling the same stories we’ve told for hundreds of years. There’s nothing wrong with that: the reason we keep coming back to the same stuff is because it’s good. Be ravenously curious. Absorb things. Make playlists. Save images. Keep notebooks. Ask questions. Talk to strangers.

I feel it’s a bit of a prerequisite for writers to have obsessive personalities. I tend to get fixated on something. It might not come to anything at the time, but it might end up being dropped into something, even in the smallest way, later on. I spent two weeks on undertakers. I have yet to write anything about undertakers, but I now know there’s a dating site called ‘Dead Meet’ specifically for people in the ‘death industry’. So, who knows, maybe an idea might come out of it, and if I see a play about undertakers and online dating, I’ll know you’ve stolen my idea.

But you can make it better