My heart is beating so fast against the slow, calm indifference of the world

Since graduating from university, I have struggled to find a literary community that shares the same ideals as me and has the same tastes. In 2008 I founded a young writer's group, comprising of me, two other girls, a boy (who would later become my boyfriend) and a couple of other guys here and there. It started off promisingly, had good moments like this one time we went to a poetry event that had no poetry at all but just music (there was a band in particular that I liked where a girl was playing a musical saw!), there were bad times (when we met up with a girl who brought a sheet of verbal diarrhoea for us to read, but I had nothing to say other than 'err, that was good'). It lasted a maximum of eight months - it ended at the Notting Hill carnival due to a mixture of my inability to relate to the new members of the group. And I do tend to lose my focus and interest pretty quickly, oops.

I started writing a play about a Richard and Judy show in a parallel universe where Judy elopes to Minnesota with Bob Dylan and Richard becomes a travelling guru with his wolf-man, chimpanzee-voiced genius hermaphrodite lover Ezekiel Methuselah. So, I naturally thought to myself, 'I have potential to be a playwright'. So I enrolled onto a script-writing course in Stratford and guess what? The teacher was a deeply insecure middle-aged woman who basically rubbished my ideas and told another girl (who was really confident and ambitious) to stop being so insecure. She was like a witch. And I couldn't bear to be criticised without the constructive part.

In July of this year, I attended a local writer's meeting at a library, it was okay at first, I enjoyed narrating from the point of view of a potato and a pea (one of our writing tasks). But when it came to writing a story there and then about a row between a bus conductor and an Elvis impersonator, I thought to myself 'this is so shit'. Needless to say, I didn't go back.

Next, I enrolled myself onto a short story writing course at the Mary Ward centre. After one class I was bored stiff. Our first homework was to read a story by a writer called Flannery O'Connor. Who?? I know! I mean, here I was trying to be experimental by writing surreal stories about hermaphrodites, rockstar dogs named Herbert and an alternative version of a fairytale, trying to put myself in the same league as people like Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, J.D Salinger and Haruki Murakami and there was the teacher, trying to turn us into painfully-bland, middle-england writers like Flannery effing O'Connor - the kind of writers who have a trendy picture on their book cover of a fashionable, generic-looking scene rather than a striking and bold painting by a painter from the 1890s or something equally beautiful.

I don't want people to put me in boxes dammit! I'm a person, trying to get to grips with my desire to write and as if I didn't already have enough demons within me separating my mind into different streams, I then have to deal with the market out there putting labels on people like me.

I'm a woman, I'm poor, I'm an ethnic. The bookshops out there, the bestseller lists and newspaper reviews all seem to shout at me the same thing Albert said to Celie in the Colour Purple; "You're black, you're poor, you're ugly, you're a woman, you're nothing at all!" Screw him (on Celie's behalf) and screw them (on my behalf)

My problem isn't just that I'm a ethnic, working-class woman trying to write as good (if not, better) than the men and to be respected by a white audience, but that my identity isn't very solid and I can't write with conviction and can't market myself with confidence.

Despite all these obstacles in my way, I'm not going to give up. I'll write and strive till the day I die.

And on a mildly related note - don't ever (ever!) enter into a relationship with a fellow writer, if you're a woman. For the man, it's fine, he'll find a way to come out the stronger one of the two, he'll even suck you dry and treat you as his muse (by the way, in the old days a muse was usually a prostitute or working class) under the pretence of loving you, and perhaps he does love you genuinely, but not in the way that you need. Being a female writer and sharing your life with a male writer is just about the worst thing you could do to your writing career. He'll find you ever so fascinating, wild and crazy, he'll suck all the blood out of you like a vampire, feed his own lifeless, pale, bourgeois art with your authentic, exotic nature and turn his art into something quite exquisite. But don't let him do that!

He may have stolen my artistic identity, but I have the power to innovate and create a new one out of near-nothing. If it wasn't for him, I'd be standing on the shoulders of giants instead of starting out right at the bottom.

And once again, I have succeeded in generalising the whole of menfolk by the actions of one man, apologies. But the fact is, women like me need a practical, worldly man like a policeman or engineer or something - someone who will find me fascinating but can't steal from me because he is secure in his own identity to never steal from a partner. I still believe in love, just not with a writer. I really feel for Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath and Zelda Fitzgerald who have been overshadowed by Jean-Paul Sartre, Ted Hughes and F.Scott Fitzgerald respectively. I wouldn't want to be on the dark side of the moon when I deserved to be on the lit side just as much as him.

Oh the politics of it all!

Who wants to be a writer/ artist anyway?

These past few months I have been pondering on my inability to make a go of being a writer or an artist. Yes, it's true I do get regular visions of creativity that are the basic requirements of being a writer or an artist of some sort. Every month I used to have the demons of restlessness pestering my soul until I produced a poem, an extra couple of scenes in my play or a short story or two. Nowadays those demons are of a more angelic nature and are focused more on visual art. Every month I paint a picture of two of an abstract expressionist nature, I draw a picture or two of indeterminate subject matter. I produce the art and the literature but there's always something stopping me from exposing myself to the world or promoting myself.

I used to be of the belief that creativity is dirt common and that only the very privileged of those creative souls were able to make something of themselves. To an extent I still believe this. But I am now of the belief that there is more to life and the world around us than art and literature. I would much rather establish myself in the solid world, as an individual whose purpose is to help alleviate the suffering of others or to nurture people and in turn help feel more human.

I used to dream of being a glamorous and famous writer like Doris Lessing in her youth, a well-dressed hostess of sophisticated and intellectual parties like Virginia Woolf's sister. It doesn't exist. Not for me anyway. I am ground in place by my circumstances, by my background, by the people I know, by my contacts, by my ethnicity, economic condition, introversion. I am not like those people, nor will I ever be. Do I even want to?

Whats important is for me is to be authentic to my personal circumstances, to experience life to its fullest, to mature, to develop myself further. And most importantly, to stop thinking of fame and fortune, not because I'm talentless and deluded or that I'm lowly and humble and don't deserve any of it. But because fame and fortune don't equate with enlightenment, or the happily ever after, and most soberingly of all, it doesn't mean I'll live forever. One day I will too die, just like billions of people before me. I cannot take fame and fortune with me to the other side.

So my answer is, no, I do not want to be a famous artist or writer. I much prefer my own life to be a work of art than works of art to be my whole life. I don't want to be a slave. I just want to live a simple life and do an honest job. And Joyce Carol Oates, I would much rather be Alice than Lewis Carroll.

I'm only 23 years old and I think I'm entitled to live life before writing about it.

We've come a long long way

We have come a long, long way this year, haven't we? And without making sweeping generalisations, I will focus this little post on someone I know very well - myself. Last year I was a sad little graduate of a girl, all my self-esteem and aspirations stolen from me by the culture-shock of the real world. Gradually, time healed me. My quarterlife-crisis ended at some point in late November 2008 (it had started in December 2007 and reached its ugly peak in July 2008) and I'm happy to say I'm a lot happier nowadays just living in the moment, working in a satisfying, ethical and human job (albeit paying merely pocket-money). As such, my creativity is happy too. It's no longer fighting for my attention in a mind controlled by job-hunting and desperation and confusion. I'm no longer trying to work out my role and place in society because I've found it at last. I'm also not feeling nearly as nostalgic about university as last year - who wants to be uprooted from society, be spoonfed a stimulating and amazing mixture of social life, intellectual musings and fake notions of grandeur when you can be a salt-of-the earth type person who works during the week for something worthwhile and satisfying and builds a lasting base out in the real world?

Work is good for the creative soul. You don't have to be a young heiress living in Madagascar to write works of Literature. You don't have to be a lottery winner doing a year abroad in a university studying the craft of writing under an accomplished and famous teacher. Hell, you don't even have to be a young middle-class graduate travelling around the world, having the time of your life, all the while being funded by your hard-working oxen of a parental unit, no. You can be poor like me, living with your parents and siblings for the time being, while working towards moving out and doing a meaningful and well-paid job like a primary school teacher or a domestic violence worker.

Screw privilege and the type of opportunities that are handed to you on a silver plate. Forget being a member of the gentry or nobility, what's truly noble is working for a living and creating your own opportunities, making the good life happen with your own two hands. If there's anything Obama has taught me is that it's never too late - the guy paid off the last of his student debt only a few years ago and is now the president of the USA and providing very well for his adorable little family unit. In fact, he's a bundle of hope for everyone out there. And without going into the politics of it, I can safely say this brilliant, beautiful, charming brown man has shifted the way we think. Even if he turns out to be an incompetent politician (which I highly doubt), at least he has been a mentor to us all.