They say everything that happens to you – good or bad – prepares you for being a writer. Let’s take the case in point: coffee.

In the morning, I need a cup of coffee to get me going. It actually takes about three cups for me to really hit my writing stride. Luckily for me, my first part time job while I was in college had a six hour shift pattern. I was smoking back then (young, cool and stupid) so I had an obligatory 10-15 minutes to have both a smoke and a cup of coffee before I returned to work.

My body became super conditioned to drinking hot coffee. Really hot coffee from an industrial boiler. I’d watch my fellow part-timers throw away cup after cup of half finished coffee (or tea), lamenting the fact there was never enough time to enjoy a proper drink before heading back out. Not me. I needed that cup otherwise I would be as brutal as if I had missed out on having the smoke. Again kids, do as I say, not as I do. That habit has been kicked for over a decade now and I intend for it to stay that way.

Not the coffee though. I kicked it for a while and went totally caffeine free. By then I’d worked up to about twenty a day, which struck me as replacing one habit for another. So I cut back and went cold turkey over a couple of weeks. I’m sure I was a joy to be with.

Writing life though, tends to be about compromise. Do I want to be able to get in a thousand words before 7am each morning? You bet I do. Does that mean getting a little juice inside me? Of course it does. As I sit down at my desk each morning with my first scalding cup, I know it’ll be gone in less than 10 minutes and 100 words. The next cup will go just as fast, but with more words attached. Three cups in the hour and I’ll have hit my 1000. After that, it’s decaf all the way baby, because I know how easy it is to associate writing with bad habits. Alcohol, smoking, drugs to make your brain more capable of coming up with the ideas that – if you weren’t writing a novel – would make you either a psychopath or a sociopath. Coffee seems a safe alternative in comparison, but I don’t need any gateway drugs, thanks.

Still, the crappiest job in the world prepared me to better embrace the thing I love the most, and for that I am eternally grateful.