When I was growing up, all I ever wanted to do was write books. I used to thumb through my favourites until they fell apart. I knew I'd never actually be a writer because, a) I couldn't write anything as good as what was in those books, and b) I didn't understand Shakespeare or Poetry (apart from the War Poets). It took me many years to realise that I couldn't write Catch 22 because it had already been written, that I had to write my own material. And that it didn't matter if Shakespeare and Poetry bored me to death, because they bore a lot of people. So when I did, eventually, get my first novel accepted - woaaah, I was off and running. As well as the impossible dream of writing books, I had the double-extra-impossible dream of writing screenplays for movies. So when the question came: do you fancy writing a screenplay? Woaaah, there was no stopping me there either.
I can't think of a better way to spend my days. I am just totally unsuited to any other way of life. I was a journalist on the County Down Spectator for the best part of 15 years, but I rarely moved from my desk and had a thing about phoning people. Hated it. You could count the number of scoops I came up with on your thumbs, and that would be exaggerating. But it taught an essentially lazy person to be disciplined, to get the work done, and I apply that to my writing. I work office hours. I'm disappointed if I don't manage to complete a chapter or 10 pages of a screenplay each day. They won't always be top notch, but a lot of writing is re-writing, and the sub-editing experience comes in handy. If you cut something out, painful as it might be, nobody else is ever going to know. (Although they would have in the days of typewriters and Tipp-ex, one reason the PC is a Godsend). I don't plan out what I'm writing in advance, just make it up as I go along. It's a dangerous game to play, but fun as well.
I am, I know, ridiculously prolific. The fact is, when I get an idea, it worries at me, gnaws at my legs until I get it written, get it out of my system. The quicker I do it, the quicker the relief. Only thing is, there's always another one out there, waiting to sink its teeth into me.
It should, rightly, make you ill when people say they don't do something for the money, and I'm not a frigging charity, but I love doing this. I can't wait to get into my office in the morning, to get that computer switched on. I write under the influence of Diet Pepsi, which is a bit of a nightmare since I moved from the North to the northside of Dublin; it's all Pepsi Max down here, a subtle but important difference, and I find myself touring supermarkets over a 30-mile radius like some helpless junkie trying to track down elusive supplies of the real deal. Luckily, I rarely suffer from writer's block: an afternoon at most. The antidote is always a trip to the cinema. If it's a good movie I'll come back inspired, if it's bad, annoyed at the waste of money and determined to write something better. Basically, I sit in a room and make things up.
Sometimes I think it's a daft way to make a living.
Colin Bateman's new novel Turbulent Priest is published by HarperCollins, price £10.99 in UK.