First, can I say that if you’re a member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, you’ll be getting a postal ballot soon, which includes where you need to vote for me to continue as Deputy Chair.

Okay, it’s the same spot where you could instead vote for either of two others who are standing for the post. Plus you’ll see a pitch from each of us and I think you’ll agree that the three candidates are strong ones. We need that strength more than ever now because these are such hard times for writers so I think it’s tremendous that there is a range of candidates for my job.

Er, I mean for the job. Obviously.

Equally obviously, if you have a vote in this, you must use it the way you think best. But I suggest it’s probably just more convenient to put a tick next to my name.

Look at me: next thing you know, I’ll be out kissing babies and doing hustings. Which I swear to god I used to think was a dance. Arguably, it is.

Anyway. This matters to me enormously and I don’t seem to be able to hold a thought in my head that I don’t immediately say to you. But it wasn’t what I wanted to say.

What I wanted to say was something that’s quite possibly naive of me, but I think is also hopeful — and at least this week, I think it’s true.

If you write, good things happen. If you stop writing, they don’t.

Now, I don’t mean that everything you or I write is gold and will be commissioned or fulfil a commission. I don’t even mean anything to do with whatever it is you’re writing. I mean the act of getting on with it, of writing even though times are hard, it does something for us.

For one thing, you can hide in your writing and I’ve had times when I’ve really needed to do that.

But also there is something about practicing our craft that seems to me to enable that craft. Hopefully I get better at writing over time, but if I do, it is solely because of writing a lot.

And here’s the example, the reason why this is on my mind this week even when the election stuff is going on. On Sunday, I finished a book project. I have not one thin clue what will happen with it next, except that I will doubtlessly restart it and maybe rewrite it, I don’t know. But I got to the end of a project I’ve put off for years.

As I was making every conceivable backup copy of that project, though, another equally old and long-running book project sprang back to life. I shouldn’t be this excited because it died quite thoroughly more than a decade ago, but I am absolutely giddy about it. Talking mile-a-minute. Remembering obscure anecdotes interviewees told me off the record when I was originally researching it back in the day.

I don’t really have a thin clue what will happen with this one. But I know that there is nothing like the absolute thrill of getting to write something that matters to you.

I’d tell you what the two projects are, except I suppose they’re secret and anyway, I’d be more mysteriously exciting if I don’t reveal it.

Tell you what, vote for me and I’ll tell you. That’s what you want from the Writers’ Guild, none of this fighting for our rights and our conditions and our money, you want obscure titles that will entirely make you shrug.

But truly, pushing on with writing, being unusually happy with what you’re producing, god, there’s nothing like it.