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'Despite the unpromising financial situation, after twenty-odd years trying to make a living on and around Grub Street - several novels published to grudgingly respectful reviews and negligible sales - I feel that this might just be the year in which something happens. Then again it might not. But hope drives all writers on.' '6th April 2007. Writing income for the year so far: -£300.' This is Chris Paling's diary of trying to make a living as a writer through the typical career trajectory of what is deemed a 'mid-list' novelist. In renumeration terms, writing is a career that often ends in disappointment and despair, and occasionally disgrace. Paling artfully explores what compels him and so many others to write - the battling joys and agonies of when that compulsion beds itself in one's psyche, and a day without writing is a day wasted. His is a fascinating insight into the writing process as he tracks the need to write something new or something old in a new way, something relevant, something that needs to be written when very little actually does, in search of that ever-elusive goal of being 'in print'. By turns moving, wry and brutally honest, the book unveils the rewarding yet soul-baring life of a novelist. At its heart it is a love letter to the art of writing and also a profound reflection on the forces that drive us all. 228pp.