It’s early on a bright, cold Saturday morning in Camden Town, and tourists are already beginning to emerge from the Underground. Hawkers engage them in bartering on the market, chain-store coffee baristas serve them up steaming-hot drinks, policemen give them directions; activity unfolds in a thousand interactions, growing steadily beneath an uninterested, fragile blue sky, as yet unbroken by a single cloud. </p>
     Back and forth along the High Street the tourists shuffle. The pavement below their feet is clean, last night’s broken glass and leaf-litter of flyers all swept away. Above them, townhouses lean in, listening. These red-bricked buildings are four storeys high and have seen countless processions of tourists. They may have been grand homes, once, and to the passing sightseer they still look impressive. But inside, their once-airy drawing rooms and spacious bedrooms have all been brutally divided up and sectioned off, so as to cram in the maximum amount of rent-paying residents. </p>
     One such tenant is a writer. He lives alone in a bedsit which overlooks the Britannia Junction, a pigeon’s swoop away from the busy shops, pubs, Tube station and flower stall. This morning the writer pays no attention to the pedestrians passing below his home, however, for he is fast asleep. </p>
     Submerged in a bed that’s pushed up next to the room’s only window, he’s wrapped in a rucked duvet, breathing in deep, sleep-regulated breaths. The noise from the street is perfectly audible inside this match-box home – despite the closed and curtained window – engines, sirens, the banshee brakes of buses, an early busker’s shivering chords, the accompanying hubbub of myriad conversations en-masse: it can all be heard clearly. Yet the sleeping writer does not stir. </p>
     The drawn curtains are cream in colour and are not thick, and so the morning’s shade slips in easily alongside its sounds, as if trying to escape the bright sky. Once inside, that dim light gathers up its shadows and casts them about the stark furnishings of the room. The calendar on the wardrobe door is given a good frame of darkness; gloom is pushed back between the leaning novels on the bookshelf; the heap of clothes discarded on the chair develops unnatural depths while the clutter on the table seems to shift, uncertain of its edges. The three pairs of shoes lurking at the foot of the bed by a solid black guitar case look ready to run. </p>
     The writer turns in his bed, oblivious. He murmurs, perhaps in a dream.</p>
     The half-light continues its slow waltz around the room, hiding this, highlighting that. In a space as small as this, the table is the logical hub, and out of necessity it must have to perform many functions. It is undoubtedly a place to eat, a media centre, a workspace, and it is also where the morning light focuses its gentle dance.</p>
     It seems that the table was most recently used as a desk, although there are signs of consumption too. Books are piled dismissively next to an open, dormant laptop, an empty mug, two empty beer bottles and reams of loose paper that very nearly hide a small, crumby plate. Shadows move freely amongst this mess but it does not cover the whole table, for a little clearing has been created towards the front where another book is left with its pages open: the writer’s journal. </p>
     A pen is poised atop the journal, quiescent in the straight paper-valley at the spine of the book, waiting like a bullet in a pistol’s firing chamber. The light allows for a close inspection of those open pages, and discloses the handwritten heading ‘Challenges Facing Unknown Authors’. </p>
     On the other side of the room, the writer turns again in his bed, a frown passing over his face.</p>
     On the left-hand page of the journal, a long, unbroken sentence is pulled in a hurry across the paper, the black ink of some words smudged by the passing of a palm. </p>

<i><blockquote>Capture some essence from the heart of the process, some problem, part of the struggle. Hint at the strength required? No: the endurance. Give a glimpse of the challenge made to the artist during the discipline of writing; outline the need for patience during its undertaking. To progress with prolonged, sustained quality prose requires stamina: yes. Often a need to dig deep. Especially following failure/rejection. How to capture this problem? Difficult essay to approach. Highlight temptation to give up and start on some other project. Some other, easier project. Highlight fact that successful writers cannot quit, or else nothing started is finished. And anyway, abandoned work is never improved work: so the writer must be hardy and robust. Highlight difficulty of day job, of suffocating city, rent expectations, peer expectation, plus envy of peers’ success. Give detailed image of doubtful expressions seen in response to empty-sound of ideas. Highlight gravity of phone screen, computer screen, television screen; Highlight regret of pointless procrastination, addiction to various home-feeds, fleeting nature of time, tidal nature of sleep. No. Wait. Stop. Subject too dense for such approach. Will ramble, will condescend, won’t be useful, won’t make sense. All bollocks, all pretence. What approach then? Maybe try to ask the page? Ask the page about this problem. Catch problem in a cage of notes on the page. Write it out. And then sleep on it. </i></blockquote>

     On the right-hand page of the journal, neater rows of writing form a square.</p>

<i><blockquote>You say you’re a writer. You read, and you love what you read. You think you can offer something too. A similar escape with a different approach; you believe you can offer some image never seen. You have ideas, you cherish them, you write them; nurture them. You tell people you’re a writer. You tell people you love writing. People smile but you know they don’t think you’re a writer. They ask you what you do. You tell them you’re a barman, a waiter, a clerk, a temp; just while you write
                                                 but you know they need proof. Proof of success, measured in money. You say you don’t care about money, but they are not convinced. You have doubts. Doubts about what you are; doubts about writing, doubts about everything. You write down your doubts, and act like writing them down exorcises them, banishes them. But your doubts remain, lingering. Writing isn’t therapy, you think; writing isn’t medicinal. But neither are doubts new; other writers must suffer similary: you wonder how they cope. You set to work studying, mimicking, contemplating, discussing those writers. You meet people who say they are writers too; their numbers dishearten you but you connect with some and it helps. You stick out your job, you keep your head down. You squeeze sentences from spare seconds. You write every day, determined, and slowly your work grows. You take your journal everywhere. People ask you what you’re doing. You say you’re a writer: they smile. Your doubts linger. <i></blockquote>

     The sleeping writer stirs once more, grunting softly, possibly about to wake. A frown passes again over his face. Perhaps he’s dreaming of the uncertainties cast in black-Biro across the pages of his journal. </p>
     Outside, while shadows continue to shift around his little room, the crowds on Camden High Street thicken in the pale winter sunlight, the blue sky remaining empty above; apathetic, utterly indifferent. 


                                                     
