Let me tell you now, writing is a vice. Like gambling, drink or drugs, it’ll leave you broke, break your heart and ruin your health. With writing, it’s not your liver or your lungs you have to worry about, it’s your spine. Watch out for your neck, watch out for your discs.

 

There’s the heartbreak you can’t avoid: the work that doesn’t work out, the times when you’ve given it your all and still no one wants it, the knowledge that you’re always keeping a bit of yourself back from the people who love you. So what? Mountain climbers get frostbite. Footballers peak in their twenties.

 

Then there’s the avoidable kind of heartbreak. The kind we can do something about. Let me tell you how it was with me.

 

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Written by
Victoria Gosling

Victoria Gosling grew up in Wiltshire and studied at Manchester University and the University of Amsterdam. She has lived in London, Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic and Berlin. Victoria is the founder of The Reader Berlin and organises The Berlin Writing Prize.

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