“It’s hard enough trying to write a book about my life where I don’t have to make shit up. Imagine being a fiction writer and having to actually make shit up. And then fact check it. Fuck that. Preps to those guys” – Dano, the other day while trying to reach her 2,000 words-a-day limit.

So many people have told me that I should ‘write a book’ about what I have done in my life because there are just so many stories that I have from travelling. As a singer-songwriter who has released albums, I have probably still had more people tell me to write a book than to write a music album.

But writing a book is frustrating. When I first sat down to start, my journalist friend told me that he read somewhere that Stephen King says you have to write at least 2,000 words a day to consider yourself a serious writer. “Oh yeah, righto,” I think to myself, I got this, that is like writing a university essay every single day that I don’t have to research. I used to do that shit all the time.” All I had to do was hit 80,000 words to have what is deemed to be an average and acceptable sized book and I could do that in forty days, or just over a month.

For my first time, I managed it easy. And the next day wasn’t so bad either. I managed ten days straight and then hit a wall.  Because this is like running a marathon, and I fucking hate running. The first part, easy. The last part, I assume is easy mentally because you don’t have far to go, but that middle part? That is what will kill off the dreams of the best of people. I am trudging and trudging through ideas, can’t remember what the fuck I did that time in Guatemala in a drunkenly fuelled state, figure I probably need to omit that story because people don’t want to really know about that stuff or its just too personal and confronting for me to want to put it out there to the world.  I write five hundred words here. Give up, find somewhere else to write five hundred words. Give up and then find somewhere else to write five hundred words.

What I have currently is a disjointed piece of rubbish that I have finished about three out of twenty chapters. Then there came that point where I found my journals from South East Asia. 44,000 words, it said. Half a book, I thought. I can just edit these. But the reality is, I can’t. The reality is, my journals are not entertaining, funny, or cohesive. I can work with them, but that would take time and be annoying and everything I have seemed to have written about is breakfast, lunch and dinner which isn’t overly entertaining because the general masses don’t care to know about all the different forms of curry I had for lunch in Thailand.

The other problem is structure. I don’t know what era of my life to discuss. I don’t know whether to start with the early days, which are a whole lot more boring than some of the other trips. A compilation of the best countries around the world that has no overall cohesion. Or is it better to pick another time in my life and start with that. Or should I just write until I have no more stories and make several different books worth of rubbish.

I don’t know. But what I do know is this. Writing a book is frustrating. And it is fucking hard. When people told me I should do this, I knew that it was going to be hard work. I knew that it was going to be a rough time. What I didn’t realise was how much of a mental battle this was going to be every single day I sit at a computer. I am used to fighting my way through pain and discomfort in a boxing ring or with other physical forms of torture and the mental game has always let me win. But this mental game goes for months. It is a whole other type of game. But eventually I will win. I will get 80,000 words together. And then I am going to have to confront the even more boring and even more arduous task of editing. But one thing at a time. I better go and get on it. 2,000 words of ridiculousness awaits.