So I did NaNo this year. I “won” again for whatever that's worth, and I'm a bit more enthused about this one than the last, although that doesn't mean it isn't shit.

NaNo periodically sends you pep-talks from “proper” published writers designed to keep you motivated and enthused throughout the month. These are mostly quite good, and mostly say exactly what you want to hear (“what you are doing here is functionally no different from what I do for a living”) and so they get you through the month and you finish. Awesome.

The post-NaNo wrap up, however, was from Peter Carey. He apparently won a booker prize once, and fucking hell doesn't he know it.

Dear Writer,

Writing is the easiest thing in the world. Anyone can do it. It's like hitting a tennis ball against a wall. It's like swimming. Anyone can learn. You don't have to be the best. You don't need to compete in anything. On the other hand, you may aspire to be a celebrated star.

Like swimming, like playing tennis, there are people writing at all levels. If you just want to amuse yourself writing the weekends, just keep on keeping on. If you want to bash out a novel, you need no more advice than to keep on keeping on.

But if you dream of making something original and beautiful and true, if you imagine seeing your book reviewed, or in the window of a book store, you're in the same position as the ambitious swimmer—you've got a lot of training to do, a lot of muscles to build, a lot of habits to start establishing right now, today.

Okay, where to begin.

Oh yes. You smug fucking twat.

The first line gave me high hopes for the wrap-up. One of the things I love about NaNo is that it does genuinely good work to demistify writing, to challenge the destructive, classist myth that it's something only a Very Special Sort of Person can do.

But its okay! Because Peter Carey doesn't think that only Special People can write, just that only special people can write “at the highest levels”. Which means, of course, the level that he, personally writes at.

If you know what these good writing habits are, there's nothing more I can give you. Perhaps you know what I'm going to tell you—you have to write regularly, every day. You have to treat this as the single most important part of your life. You do not need anything as fancy as inspiration, just this steady habit of writing regularly even when you're sick or sad or dull. Nothing must stop you, not even your beloved children. If you have kids you do what Toni Morrison did—write in the hours before they wake. If you wish to be a like the champion who swims for four hours every day of the year, you will need extraordinary will. You either have this or you don't, but you won't know unless you try .

Notice the slippery slope here:

Writing is easy, it's something anybody can do.

Oh but writing well requires hard work.

Oh and writing really well requires a level of hard work and dedication that only special, special people have. And you either have it or you don't. It's utterly inborn, you can't change it or do anything about it. Either you're one of the Elect or you aren't. By the way, Peter Carey is part of the Elect.

This guy just emailed me to tell me I am not as special as he is and he expects me to find it inspiring. Wanker.

Oh by the way, if you think your writing is more important than your kids, that doesn't make you a serious writer, it makes you a fucking shitty parent. And if you want to do something important and beautiful and true then, well maybe I'm old fashioned but I actually think raising your kids properly is every bit as valuable as winning the Booker.

Let's say you (quietly, secretly) want to be a genius. Then you must teach yourself to be self-critical. Trust me—your own uncertain opinions are worth one hundred times more than the judgments of your friends. Your friends love you and are may be very smart. But they cannot imagine what you have not yet imagined. So don't show them stuff you fear may not be right.

No, if you quietly, secretly want to be a genius, go the fuck away and grow the fuck up. Wanting to be a genius is a sure sign that you aren't one.

As for the final piece of advice “don't show them stuff you fear may not be right” - okay I'm going to use an appeal to authority here. I apologise. I have a friend from my university days who has, in fact, gone on to be an extremely successful children's author (although I suspect that this is what Mr Carey would consider writing at a “low level”). She has a tendency to be extremely self-effacing about her work, so much so that she only made it to print at all because a friend of hers stole the first three chapters of her book and showed them to her publisher. If she hadn't show nher friends “stuff she feared may not be right” she'd never have had anything published at all, and the world would have been denied some genuinely excellent novels.

On a less anecdotal, more general level, does Mr Carey really think that your average wannabe-novelist needs more of an excuse to avoid showing their work to people? Does he really think that what new writers need to be told is “remember, if your book isn't objectively perfect you should never show it to anybody because then you might suffer rejection.”

Seriously Pete, I get that you're insecure. That's screamingly obvious from the way you're jumping up and down to tell me how serious and awesome and dedicated you are. But I don't actually give a fuck.

If you feel at all unhappy with your work, there is a good reason for it. Trust your judgment. Write the draft again, and again. This is the strength you must build—to work alone, in solitude, and write and rewrite and rewrite. Even when you finally succeed in making the original work you wished, you will still live with doubt and uncertainty. All writers learn to live with this. In this way you and I feel exactly the same about our work today.

If you ever read one of my books I hope you'll think it looks so easy. In fact, I wrote those chapters 20 times over, and over, and over, and that if you want to write at a good level, you'll have to do that too.

And if you don't, you're not a serious writer. If you only rewrite every chapter nineteen times you're writing at a fundamentally lower level that Peter Carey. You should feel bad about yourself. But of course you should feel better about yourself than those poor schmucks who only rewrote seventeen times. Not that there's anything wrong with them. They're just at a lower level than you.

Aren't value judgements great.

That is the first half of the good habits you must develop.

Here's the second half.

First, turn off your television. The television is your enemy. It will stop you doing what you wish to do. If you wish to watch TV, you do not want to be a serious writer, which is fine.

But if you do pull that plug you've just created time for that exercise which is going to build up your writing muscles like nothing else. It's called reading. Perhaps you are already reading good books for several hours a day, in which case you don't need me to preach at you. Forgive me. I only mention this because I have met an extraordinary number of beginners who don't think they need to read anything too much.

Okay, remember when I said that the whole “writers are special” thing was amongst other things, classist? This is why: “if you wish to watch TV, you do not want to be a serious writer.”

After all what could you possibly learn about a culture from its single most significant cultural outlet. What could possibly be on TV? Just a bunch of stupid shows for stupid poor people. Proper writers don't watch television, only horrible people who drink lager and eat crisps watch television. Those people can't be writers. Those people are too busy getting ASBOs and being single parents and scrounging off benefits. But it's okay, because those people aren't important enough to read my books anyway. I only write serious books for serious people.

Fuck you.

Mark Haddon, who I'm sure I don't need to remind you (but might need to remind Mr Carey, who might unfortunately overlook lesser writers) wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time said that he chose to write the book in the style of a murder mystery because that was the style of book his protagonist would have read. It was a notion he said he'd got from Jane Austen, who again wrote about people in precisely the medium that those people would have been most familiar with.

Real people watch television. If you think you can write something beautiful and true when you knowingly, deliberately and with an air of smug self-satisfaction cut yourself off from one of the most significant features in the lives of ordinary people then you are – not to put too fine a point on it – a moron. A stuck up moron.

It's a cheap shot I know, but I seem to recall that four hundred years ago the primary means of entertainment for the common man was a little thing called “theatre” and that a gentleman by the name of Shakespeare who I understand is quite famous did a lot of interesting work in that medium. But perhaps his work would have been better if he'd ignored popular entertainment and focused on reading books by dead people. In Latin.

I don't doubt these people enjoy their writing, and perhaps they will even get to publish something. But you can not play the top game without reading every day. There are so many extraordinary books waiting for you, some writing by living writers, the majority by those a long time dead. This is not because writers used to be better than they are now, but because a lot of generations have come before us and we would be crazy not to know what miracles they achieved

Sorry to bang on about this, but seriously Pete, why is it “crazy” not to read books written five hundred years ago in foreign languages but completely sensible to ignore an entire fucking artistic medium.

Would it, by any chance, have anything to do with the antiquated, elitist mentality that the merits of a work of fiction are in inverse proportion to its accessibility? Would it have anything to do with the fact that reading books written by dead people in dead languages makes you feel cool and special, while watching TV shows that might have been written by anybody makes you feel ordinary? Might it be that actually choosing your reading list based on the idea that old = good makes you not only a wanker, but a culturally moribund wanker.

For every person I have met who reads classic literature because they love it, I have met a dozen who read it because they think it makes them look smart. Funnily enough, a lot of the latter sorts tend to be wannabe writers.

Some of the great books are about people with lives just like you. Some will have characters you can 'identify' with, but some of the very greatest will tell stories you could never have imagined, were written in languages you cannot speak, and tell the stories of people like none we have ever known.

And they will tell them against the background of a cultural context I cannot access, and which I can only hope to misunderstand and oversimplify. If they are told in a language I cannot speak, then I can read them only in translation, in which case I am already at a remove from the text and would be better placed looking at something that is more directly accessible.

Oh, and to belabour the point a little more: you know what else I can find a lot of in languages I don't speak, telling stories I have never imagined about people like none I have ever known? Television shows.

And if you think you need to read books by dead people to hear stories you've never imagined, it's because you're a small minded little prick who's forgotten that there's a world past the end if your nose. Go watch a Bollywood movie – again I know it's painful, I know it's a lower level than you're used to, but it ticks all the boxes you're asking for. Language you don't speak? Check. Stories of people like none you've ever known. Check. Hell watch Anime. Listen to some fucking rap.

Or when you talk about “great stories” you could “never have imagined” are you only talking about books by dead white men?

Now you've killed the TV, you should invest in a very good dictionary.

I know it is a major drag to stop reading and look up a word in a dictionary, but it is less of a drag than continuing to read not knowing what the story really means. No-one wants to do it. I never want to do it, but it is always worth the trouble. In my own case I often write the new word down, not because I am stupid, but because it helps me remember it.

Okay, back up a fucking second.

First off. Do you seriously stop reading a book to look up a word in a dictionary? You fucking prescriptivist moron. Dictionaries don't define words, context defines words. I know I've already played the Shakespeare card but guess what, he made up words.

Secondly if you equate “knowing the dictionary definitions of words” with “knowing what a story really means” then you are such a fucking idiot I can barely believe I am wasting my time complaining about you.

So what books should you read if your greatest aim is to lift your game?

Clearly "Goose Bumps" is not going to help you in your ambitions, but where to start, where to continue the adventure you're already on?

I'd suggest a wonderful new book by Francine Prose, "Reading Like a Writer."

Go buy this now. You may already be a disciplined, talented original writer but you will not be sorry to read this for two hours tomorrow.

.
Firstly, “Goosebumps”? Does he think we are fucking twelve. If he does, does he think this is a remotely acceptable way to speak to a twelve year old? Or to anybody?

You smug fucking twat.

Secondly, you've just spent the past however much of my time telling me that there are “stories I never could have imagined” out there and what do you tell me my first step should be? One of those fucking awful self-help style books that get sold by the millions to wannabe-novelists (okay, I should add that I've not read “Reading Like a Writer” because, well, I don't like those sorts of books and the title alone makes me want to punch people)? Seriously? Couldn't you think of one of those stories I could never imagine? One single work of fiction that had actually fucking meant something to you, instead of being a stepping stone on your personal path to stardom?

If being a writer means buying into your smug, patronising, self-aggrandizing bullshit, Mr Carey, then not only do I have no desire to be one I have no desire to interact with anybody who does. This pathetic pile of insecure self-justifying shit doesn't just make me want to give up on writing, it makes me want to give up on reading because there is no way on God's green earth I want to be part of this man's narcissistic delusions.