Paul Canty, author of Clapham
Lights: now a writer, not a
write-off
If you’re going to quit your job, there are better times to do it than two
weeks before the biggest financial crash in living
memory. For two years, I had been working as a
copywriter and event tester for a stag weekend agency. It might sound like fun
but it was a dead-end job. After what felt like thousands of quad biking
write-ups, I was concerned my mind was turning to jelly.
So I resigned and confidently told everyone that I would either find
somewhere amazing to work (like the UN, NASA or Tesco Express) or write a novel.
I had an English degree, a decent portfolio of work and recruitment agents were
calling incessantly. A new, better-paid job would be a formality, wouldn't it?.
Eight months later, Britain was in recession and I was unemployed. In all
that time I’d had one unsuccessful interview and two of the recruitment agencies
I used had closed down.
Was I unemployable? I had a degree no employers wanted (a 2.2) from a
university no recruitment consultants had heard of (UEA) and my most recent job
involved racing go-karts and too many weekends in former Soviet bloc states. I
considered ditching my actual experience and claiming that I’d been in prison
since 2001 for a crime I didn’t commit. At least it would give the HR person
reading my CV a good laugh before they threw it in the bin.
I was getting nowhere and had to move out of London and back in with my
parents. I locked myself away with creative writing books, wrote some (bad)
short stories and planned a novel. When the plan reached 10,000 words, I felt
confident enough to start writing.
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