''Like all good diarists Paling''s musings are funny, tender and uncensored'' Sunday Times6 April 2007Writing income for the year so far: minus £300''I feel that this might just be the year in which something happensThen again it might not. But hope drives all writers on.''It''s unlikely that you''ll know Chris Paling''s face or have heard his name. This is his diary of trying to make a living as a writer, through the typical career trajectory of what is deemed a ''mid-list novelist''Publishing rule 6: there is no such thing as a ''low-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 wastedA fascinating insight into the writing process, he tracks the need to write something new, or something old in a new way, someth