by Alice Nutter
Writing is confidence, that's what a writer friend told me just after I had stopped being in the pop band, Chumbawamba, to sit down and write every day. But if you are working class and left school with two not very good O Levels (neither of them in English) then having the sheer bloody gall to believe you can write has got to come from somewhere. Deciding you can earn a living from writing is on a par with becoming an astronaut in the unfeasibility stakes but I was like Kevin Costner in Field Of Dreams (without the baseball gear) but where he said, 'If I build it, they will come,' I chanted, 'If I write it, they'll want it."
A couple of people said I was brave, what they really meant was mad. Friends advised me that I would have more chance of earning a living as a media punter. For years I had done telly as Chumbawamba's spokesperson but that was just an offshoot of the job, the thought of appearing on List programmes, talking shit about things I didn't care about, sickened me.
Working class kids aren't kitted out to believe they can have creative lives, and here I was deciding that I could have, not just one ridiculous job but two. Why? Because being in a punk rock band for twenty odd years had given me the sort of self-belief that you can generally only get from parents sending you to fee paying public school. I saw a blog on this the other day, it talked about the way the class structure is reinforced by private education and the working class inferiority complex. But whereas upper class swagger is based on the lie of being innately superior – and so crumbles when faced with other human beings who won't play along – the assurance that Chumbawamba gave me, was that in human terms I am as good as anybody else, and whatever class or situation we are born into, we should all be entitled to an equal, creative life – that obviously that does not fit with capitalist notions of the way the world should be ordered.
Years ago I had worked out that a creative life was more important to me than a steady wage, and that building the life you want involves risk. When I was in Chumbawamba I was never under any illusions about my musical ability, I knew the bloke giving me stamps at the post office was probably more musical than me, he just wasn't prepared to take the same chances, or work quite as hard.
Punk rock was not a musical style, it was a political culture, a creative explosion that allowed us to remake ourselves, and for me it was revolutionary. Suddenly there was a road out of Burnley that didn't just lead to marriage and pregnancy. As Chumbawamba we shared a squat, had communal money and believed that our actions could have a bearing on the world outside ourselves. I found myself in an atmosphere where I was encouraged to be creative, I started to write and I never really stopped.
We rejected the eighties, the I'm Alright Jack mentality, and worked collectively. And you cannot be in a collective with a DIY ethos without being prepared to put the hours in. Getting up on stage is the glamorous bit, answering mail from irate teenagers, going to the post office to weigh envelopes for Poland, and more importantly spending half your life in band meetings because everything was decided by consensus, was not glamorous. But I do recognise it was life changing. I learnt pragmatism, co-operation, and quality control and to never be afraid of getting the red pencil out and starting again.
The lessons I learnt as part of Chumbawamba would stand me in good stead for anything. When I decided that I would stop jumping up and down on stage and write, I knew one thing, I was a better writer than I was a musician but that wasn't saying much. I was also aware that if I was serious about writing I couldn't piss around, I had to study story and structure and learn quickly. I was lucky in that the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Jimmy McGovern both saw something in my work and encouraged it. And Jimmy gave me the best advice that I have had to date: "Work four times as hard as everybody else," I took it in the spirit it was offered. He wasn't suggesting competitiveness but that I not waste potential. Now I get lost in somebody else's story to tell mine.
When I first crossed over into my new writing life, I thought it would be a solo flight rather than the sort of collaboration I'd thrived on. Far from being a solitary occupation, once the script is on the paper it becomes a team effort with directors, other writers and editors. Yes, I spend almost everyday alone writing and miss the social aspect and being paid to get drunk. Nobody claps while I struggle with a script, but I've always known that rock 'n roll is mainly a confidence trick, they weren't cheering me, it was the spectacle. Still, I'm fully aware that having that sort of validation gives you a head start.
(to read what Tod thinks about all this, go to "Just Do It" in the Todblog…)