Blog 107 - WTF is Cash?

Blog 107 - WTF is Cash?

February 2026

I have come to a very sad conclusion, “I’m a writer who can’t afford to write.” I know that’s the kind of line that sounds like a punch line you’d expect in a sitcom, yet it’s the everyday reality that shows up in my inbox, it is permanently marked on my calendar (In Pen), and it's the emotional crisis that dogs me at 3 a.m. most mornings while I’m pretending to work.


Writing this blog is a sliver of sanity in a 12hr shift at an asylum. However, it has also been a bit like opening a dusty attic: I’ve found old trunks filled with ideas, a few broken toys (aka half finished stories), and, surprisingly, a secret stash of glittering insights I didn’t even know I owned. In the process, I’ve learned things about myself that would make even my therapist raise an eyebrow. So, pull up a chair, grab a cup of whatever keeps you ticking, and let’s wander through the winding corridors of the frustrated writer’s mind—light heartedly, of course, (he says trying to convince no one but himself).

When I set out on this literary journey, I tried to imagine what being a full-time writer would be like and how I could get there, I often imagined myself as a literary scuba diver, descending into the abyss of my subconscious with a trusty notebook and a flash of inspiration as my oxygen tank. In reality, the dive usually ended after a few meters when I realized my subconscious is a very scary shark tank…I usually panicked and scrabbled to the safety of the island of procrastination. Often bolting down the you-tube rabbit hole as soon as I got there. However, I persevered and the dives got deeper and the sharks fewer. The moral? Even when you think you’ve “reached your limit,” you can go deeper, it just takes time and practice.

The most frustrating part of being a penniless writer at the start of the journey is finding fresh material. Sometimes it feels a lot like hunting for a unicorn in a field of horses. Every now and again you think you’ve spotted one, you follow it for a while and—bam! — you realise it’s just a horse wearing a party hat. I’ve tried everything: random prompts, “write about a random object you see,” deep philosophical questions "What do you want from writing?", and even “Just write something... anything” My most successful trick, surprisingly enough, is not to look for content but to let content find me. I've found that stories want to be told, they actively seek out story tellers and force them to take a new look at the mundane and ask, “What if this had a secret life?” Suddenly, the ordinary becomes a treasure map, and I’m the eager pirate with a pen as my compass.

My head is filled with paragraphs, chapters and whole worlds. There are characters lining up and shouting at me, all of them waiting to be assigned a life on paper. The problem I find, is having the time to sort them all out and write them down. “Free Time” is a non-entity in my world. But there are a few tricks I’ve picked up while learning to juggle a night security job and the occasional latte induced creative burst, feel free to give them a try if you feel inclined:

Micro Writing Sessions – take this blog for example, I write whatever pops into my head. No editing, no perfectionism. It eases the craving and lets you get on with life without the gnawing sensation that comes from not writing. I like to think of them as mental espresso shots.

Try “Competition Writing” – Enter a short story, poem or a hundred-word challenge competition each month. After a year, you’ll have 12 pieces of work—enough to stitch together a novella, a poem collection, or at least a very interesting blog and they may even be rewarded with some form of validation or even better...cash!

Money Talks, (In my case not very loudly though) let’s be honest: the writer’s lifestyle often looks like a romanticized montage in movies—rainy windows, typewriters, endless cups of coffee. The reality is a bit more… budget conscious. I can’t afford to sit in a quiet café for hours while the world spins past me like a carousel. Instead, I’m writing at the kitchen table while my cat judges my prose, or in the bathroom because it's the one place in the house where my partner leaves me alone. The silver lining? Constraints can be creative catalysts. My limited resources force me to rely on imagination rather than ambiance, and that’s exactly what good writing is all about (At least I think it is).

So, where do I go from here? After raking the bottom of my soul clean (and discovering a few lost paragraphs in the process), I’m left with a slightly clearer but still very messy floor. The answer, I think, is simple: keep moving, keep noticing, and keep turning the ordinary into the extraordinary—one word at a time.

Being a frustrated writer who can only shoe horn creativity into sporadic slivers of time is a paradoxical blessing. It forces me to be ruthless about what matters, to cherish each flash of inspiration, and to discover hidden parts of myself that I’d never have met in a 9 to 5 office job.

So, the next time I catch myself muttering, “I wish I could write all day,” I’ll remember that the wish itself is a tiny spark. If I feed it with curiosity, a dash of humour, and a sprinkle of caffeine, before I know it, I’ll have a story to tell about the very act of writing, even if the story is just a short paragraph scribbled on my phones notepad while waiting for my partner to get out of the bathroom.

So, if anyone asks you what a frustrated penniless writer looks like, you can point them towards me and say: he’s a literary scuba diver, a unicorn chaser, a bathroom lurker with a coffee stained notebook, and he has a heart that refuses to stop dreaming. And that, dear reader, is more than enough material for a whole blog series. Happy writing— wherever, whenever, and however you can fit it in.