I’m Writing a Book

In case the title wasn’t clear enough: I’m writing a book… In fact I have been writing a book for few months now…

It’s a bit out of the blue, but there we go, now you know.

The book is all about my experiences in bar-work: a Diary of a Bartender, and will provide an insight to a bartender’s mind. Some may say that bar-work is just holding a glass at a 45º angle, but there’s so much more to it than that… I actually ran a trial shift once for a woman with three degrees once and she was completely crap, so this line of work is not for any old idiot.

I thought it my duty to enlighten the world of the perils us bartenders are subjected to; the awful everyday ‘Karens’, mad Monday morning drug-dealers, and other weird shit you would not expect from a handful of ordinary pubs. The service industry is like no other, and these weird experiences have been trapped in my head begging to get out. So I decided to write these weird stories into a book in an Adam Kay/Shaun Bythell way.

I should mention that I have read about a million of these memoir type books this year relating to their job roles (‘Diary of a bookseller’; ‘Diary of a drag queen’; ‘This is going to hurt’ to name a few), which is mildly intimidating (Adam Kay is really funny) but has inspired me to write about my experiences…

My book discuss a number of different themes common in bar work; sexism; verbal abuse; customers unable to use a toilet correctly… Yeah, there’s a lot going on. It is written as a diary, and therefore shows a heartfelt and emotional sides to the job as well as discussing the day to day hilarity that occurs through the pouring of pints. You’d be surprised how emotional bar-work can really be and how valuable the bonds created with both colleagues and customers are when working in medieval conditions of certain gross venues. I’ve used the book to document the friendships and relationships within bars and the massive communities that form across cities.

I can’t tell you when the book will be finished; how it will be marketed; where you can read it; or much more info that that. But I just wanted to let everyone know that it’s happening.

The Scary Shit

To be honest, writing the book itself hasn’t even been that scary, it’s more the idea of telling people. There’s a lot that could go wrong, and we live in a culture where everyone is afraid to fail. There’s also a lot to live up to (last time I’ll mention Adam Kay, okay).

There’s a few specific worries to unpick in terms of others’ expectations:

1. What if I tell people I’m writing a book, it turns out shit and people think I am actually not that funny (I know, unlikely)
2. What if no one wants to read it?
3. What if I tell everyone I’m writing a book, have a change of heart mid-way through and give up, leaving everyone to think I’m a failure?
4. Also it’s a bit of a random thing to suddenly announce that I’m just writing a bloody book, so I guess making people think “errr what the fuck?!” is another worry…

So these are my biggest concerns, mostly involving the fear of failure… Wow what an uncommon thing to worry about when it comes to putting yourself out there LOL.

This fear is why I haven’t really told anyone about my book until recently. In fact I still won’t let my boyfriend or mum read it properly yet. However, the more I write, the more I realise that it is good: I can be pretty funny ya know. My confidence in both my writing, and my ideas keeps developing, which is why I’ve started to tell more people about my book, and why I’m writing this blog post at all.

In terms of worrying no one will read it, I’m not writing a book to be a millionaire, I’m writing it because I want to, and because I do believe in this idea.

So the moral of the story is that I need to get over that nervous sick feeling in my stomach that appears when I think about doing something scary. I should feel proud of myself. And I do. I am WRITING A BOOK FOR FUCK’S SAKE. 

So now that I’ve unpicked my deep rooted worries on a freezing cold Megabus on the M1, please let me know, if anyone else has similar nervous-sick feelings when it comes to showing something they’re really proud of to the world?

Anyway, that’s my latest update… Thanks for reading amigos!

xoxoxoxox