Writing without is so so important to talk about. I cannot write without reading, without walking, and I cannot write without addressing what feels ethically urgent to me.

Like so many writers, I’ve learnt to work in the absence of things – time, space, income. What emerging writer doesn’t know, hasn’t felt, this? I’m not cheering this kind of writing life. Not in a thousand years. For a long time, I felt solid with the fact that I could write anywhere, on almost anything (notebook, phone, computer, napkin, forearm). I even felt proud of it. Now I am distressed by the ways deficit has been mythologised, romanticised, as foundational to great writing.

Being without, being in deficit, might create a context in which a writer produces raw, stripped-to-the-bone, nerve-shredded, skinless work. And this shredded work might be truly great. But how long can a person support this? To write as if my skin has been peeled off, I need life support from some deep place. So I add life support in a very broad sense (beyond time, space, income) to the list of things I cannot (will not?) write without.

When I treat my writing as a practice, I find I can sustain a project through to publication.