What we do in the shadows...

Every writer I know leads a double life - if not treble, quadruple. We need to earn a living, we need validation, social interaction, to be useful, to use the many and varied facets of our personality, and writing rarely ticks all of those boxes.

One of my earliest jobs, to support my literary ambitions, was with the RAC taking breakdown calls - probably the best job ever for a would-be writer. Every call was a mini-drama, a potted insight into the lives of others, and in those days the control room had a policy that we could read in between calls, but not knit. I made a life-long friend, SallyAnn, and together we’d race through an eclectic mix of fiction, sighing with exasperation when forced to pick up: ‘RAC Breakdowns, can I help you?’ I wrote a promenade play about it, called Ideal Breakdowns, in which a giddy mix of breakdowns, mechanical, physical and psychological take place, whilst imaginary patrol cars career amidst the audience.

Now, half a lifetime later, I have graduated to what must be one of the most extraordinary jobs in the UK literary world - Head of Outreach at the RLF. The Royal Literary Fund (RLF) recognises that some writers need financial support - and has, on the quiet, provided such to a host of writers since the eighteenth century. The archives offer a rich pickings - there’s a shopping list supplied by Caitlin Thomas, wife of Dylan, to support a request for funds - alcohol features amidst the washing soda. But the RLF has developed a number of programmes that benefit not only the writer, but those whose work or personal life could really be enhanced by a writer’s skills. To a writer, the essentials of good writing are bread and butter - clarity, simplicity, good structure, awareness of audience. To many, from a hospital consultant to a first year student, from someone recovering from mental illness to an academic writing a thesis, these skills are at best elusive, sometimes completely opaque.

My job is to nurture, train, enable the writer to share their skills. We began with an audit of what professional creative writers can do besides write, and what a list we came up with. Resilience, dogged determination, a commitment to the drafting process, an appreciation of simple language, a desire to make a difference. And then we sought out organisations an institutions who needed us. The RLF already had a strong presence in universities and schools. Now we work in NHS trusts, in Recovering Colleges, with trades union members, in the voluntary sector..

I am, to put it mildly, dead proud of what we’ve achieved, and eternally grateful to the RLF for enabling so many of us writers to use our skills in worlds other than our own. In some ways, it’s a far cry from the RAC, ten books ago. In others, it’s those same imperatives that drive me. Be useful. Make a difference. There’s more to you than the next book….