It's like a scene from Julia Roberts upcoming film Eat, Pray, Love (check out the trailer and tell me that it doesn't resemble some kind of horrendous T Mobile ad. Even the awful "inspirational" folk jingle that plays throughout is a carbon copy of countless "post hippie" cellular 30 second offerings).

But see, I ain't convinced by Jodi's answers. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. How do I know she's full of bull? NO ONE'S LIFE IS LIKE THAT. Even if you have the best day ever - even if you win the lottery while simultaneously snogging the person you've secretly been in love with while Julia Roberts (again) hands you your Oscar - it doesn't read like one these interviews and they are supposed to be "regular" days in a life. I wish people would be honest when it comes to things like this. Just a little bit. Sure you want to present your best self, but to present bogus life style perfection makes the rest of us feel like hunchbacks. It makes us feel lonely, isolated and subpar. It fills us with regret and frustration. Our lives feel dull and meaningless. The spin and airbrushing damages us in a place that's dark and hard to get to.

So with that in mind I've decided to give you my Life in a Day. It's not pretty, actually it's pretty hideous, but it's the truth and I think in a world where a politician is praised for appearing sincere on a TV debate, not actually being honest just appearing to be truthful, thats when the ugly truth is needed most.

Dominic Mitchell's A Life in the Day

I wake at 9am from an awful nightmare about being dead that my cruel subconscious has feed into my snoozing brain. I hate my subconscious more than Marmite. My t shirt is soaked in sweat and my head rings. I've only had 3 hours sleep due to drinking two bottles of Tesco's Own last night then stumbling / dancing around my room listening to my iPod, fantasizing about living a life that resembles a mildly uplifting Mark Ruffalo independent film. I set the alarm for the afternoon, take two Nurofen plus and put my head back on the pillow.

My subconscious pumps in more horrors and I rise in a panic. Signing on day and I've forgotten to fill in my Get Back to Work Booklet. I scramble to the internet, pull up direct.gov and cut n' paste the latest jobs. I dress without showering and ran full pelt to the Job Centre. I'm met by Stuart my new advisor (their always new, where do Work and Pensions get the giant staff pool? Do they grow'em?). He's an enthusiastic and kind person and I always wish I could give him a scrap of good news. But I can't. I'm a loser, who didn't even get a reply email from Lavazza coffee (I'd applied to be a "Caffeine Ambassador" and headlined my email "Coffee Enthusiast" - but still no joy).

Stu takes me through the latest vacancies: Admin assistant, Admin manager, Admin intern. All the jobs require 50 years of experience and a Masters degree in Boredom Control. I smile and nod as he suggests ditching the occupation WRITER on my job seekers agreement and replacing it with RETAIL. I tell him I've actually got an interview tomorrow with a director attached to the Young Vic theatre in London. Oh crap! I've forgotten to book my ticket down and secure accommodation. I sprint home and check my bank balance - almost as low it'll go. It's the Megabus coach or my legs. I consider walking. Nah, no time, I fork out the £9.50 and get packing. I pack light, not because I'm some Up In The Air George Clooney smoothie, but because at present I own one pair of black jeans (seriously, if you ever see me in public you'll see me in black jeans, this isn't any kind of fashion statement, it's to do with my bank statement). I'm out the door, leaving three unwashed plates in my room to fester until I return.

6.15pm and my Megabus is running 45 minutes late. Finally the cramped bus limbers up to the terminal and I take a seat next to someone playing Ricky Martin at maximum volume (by the time I get to Victoria I will know all the lyrics off by heart to the two classics; Livin' la Vida Loca and Shake Your Bon-Bon). I open up my book on the columbine massacre and hope the evil doings of two teenagers will drown out Rick.

Across from me I hear a slapping sound.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see a woman slapping herself in the face. She slaps her face four times then stops. I return to my page. SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP. It's the lady again, hitting her own face. Maybe she hates being on the Megabus, I think, or maybe she just really hates Shake Your Bon Bon. But when the power runs down on my seat partner's mp3 she's still at it. Slapping her face over and over again. This continues. For hours. She slaps, rests for 20 seconds, then continues with the self abuse. No one is commenting on this but the slapping is loud and even Ricky Martin's number 1 fan is disturbed by it. The hitting persists. My iPod is out of battery so I have to sit and listen to the slapping. It's like water torture. Why the hell is she slapping her own face? Forth hour in and I can't take it any longer, I'm out of my mind. I don't care if she's crazy and has a tick, if she has to slap herself in the face she can bloody well mime it like any other decent mentalist. I turn to her, mid slappage and say: "Excuse me!". It's loud and stern and I'm ready for war. She turns to me and for the first time I get a good look at her. At this moment it becomes terribly clear why she's been slapping herself in the mush: Her whole face is covered in eczema. Obviously the only way that she can resist scratching her own features off it by lightly slapping the infection. She looks at me with puppy dog eyes. I was ready to berate this person, now I do a 360 move and say; "Excuse me...is there anything I can do to help?" We have a heartbreaking conversation about her affliction. She's so nice and lovely and understanding. Then comes the kicker, she asks me; "My slapping isn't disturbing your reading is it?"

I feel 31 flavour's of awful.

I lie. I lie big; "No, no, not at all, I just wanted to see if you were alright." She smiles "No, but thank you for asking."

I turn around. She begins slapping herself again.

A weird thing happens though. The slapping doesn't bother me anymore. I can hardly hear it. My concentration returns and I can fully focus on my book. Empathy and understanding seem to trump the best headphones in the world. I feel terribly guilty of course, but it's coupled by a rush of pure love for my fellow travellers. Everyone on this Megabus, the people that many in this country believe are the lowest of the low, did their level best to ignore the Slapping Lady. They felt for her and didn't want to embarrass her or tell her off. I wonder how things would have gone down on a Virgin Trains 1st class carriage. My guess is That Slapping Lady would have lasted fifteen minutes then been kicked off at Watford Junction.

10.45pm and we finally rattle into London. I call a university friend and beg for a couch to sleep on. Like the champ he is he says no problem and when I arrive he's already mixing cocktails for me, and over lurid conversations about his latest sexual adventures and his flatmates dry witty put downs I feel content. The VIP's can keep their dawn risings, their banquets, their flawless spouses. Sometimes all you need is the kindness of strangers and the generosity of old friends to make a bad day good.

Dominic Mitchell is part of the BBC Northern Voices scheme and Bolton WritersLab

Ta for the tip Phil, you fountain of generosity. That reminds me mate; how'd that cinema adaptation of His Dark Materials work out for you? Here's one of my rules: don't be a one trick pony. Scribble that one down you self regarding berk.

As you might have guessed this pushes all sorts of buttons inside of me. Red buttons. Big red buttons with nuclear insignias all over them. I wouldn't mind if the rules from these writers were drizzled with a touch of humility and self effacing humor. But they aren't. Most are smeared with contempt for me and you, the lowly student. Here's an example from Will Self:

"4. Stop reading fiction - it's all lies anyway, and it doesn't have anything to tell you that you don't know already (assuming, that is, you've read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven't you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction)."

Thanks Willy, here's a rule of mine: a man who appears on comedy panel shows and has a face like someone's just thrown a bucket of freshly squeezed lemon juice at it and uses massive words like "flocciinauciniihilipilification" to make them seem intelligent, has no business telling me what to do. Ever.

Then some authors rules are, well, non nonsensical and rely, I kid you not, on magic. Here's Ian Rankin's last two rules:

"9 Get lucky.
10 Stay lucky."

Practical advice. So, Ian, your rules to writing fiction is to somehow find a four leaf clover or better yet a rabbit's foot or better yet a Leprechaun munching on a four leaf clover while sawing off a rabbit's foot and take this mythical creature home with me and stuff it under my laptop? Top tip there from the level headed scot.

Then there are suggestions that would need Doc Brown's DeLorean on standby. One of Zadie Smith's rules is: "When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else." What!? Christ mighty I'm a thirty year old man! How in god's name is this helpful? Unless, I suppose, it's directed at Booker Mom's and Dad's (like Tennis Mom's and Dad's) who want their offspring to grow up be top notch Whitbread winners one day. Even if I, concerned parent, followed this rule, what is Ms Smith suggesting? That I chain up little Harry in the basement with the works of Tolstoy and never let him see the light of day until he's memorized War and Peace?

But its Colm Toibin's 10 rules that get me punching the keyboard with unrestrained hate. Here they are in their full horridness:

1 Finish everything you start.
2 Get on with it.
3 Stay in your mental pyjamas all day.
4 Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
5 No alcohol, sex or drugs while you are working.
6 Work in the morning, a short break for lunch, work in the afternoon and then watch the six o'clock news and then go back to work until bed-time. Before bed, listen to Schubert, preferably some songs.
7 If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.
8 On Saturdays, you can watch an old Bergman film, preferably Persona or Autumn Sonata.
9 No going to London.
10 No going anywhere else either.

Finished vomiting yet? I haven't. The above set of rules makes me imagine murder. It makes me imagine leaving my house in Yealand Redmayne, hailing a cab, going to Carnforth station, getting a train to Manchester airport, catching the red eye to Dublin, hailing another cab to the University Collage Dublin, sleeping on the steps of the main building, waking up at 10am, waiting another hour until Colm lumbers up the stairs and punching him in his mush with one of his own tomes (which I would have bought at the airport book store). It would be a mission granted, but it would be worth it.

Colm's rules are so draped in arrogance and lies that I want to scream. Number 2 and 4 are particularly galling. "Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself". How presumptuous and thoughtless, how devoid of empathy and sympathy. Oh and 8's so pretentious I just threw up again, all over my copy of The Heather Blazing.

Now I know what you're going to say - "But Dom, their just being facetious, having a laugh, they don't mean it." That's even worse. These people have been given a chance to impart some practical advice and all they've done is turn in some lame self congregating stand up routine. For shame.

Of course some of the authors try a bit and there are some nuggets of good advice. The one a like is from Jeanette Winterson: "Take no notice of anyone you don't respect."
And from the evidence set out here, I'm gonna get to my laptop and ignore all the writers who have taken part in the ten rules for writing fiction article. Forever.

I don't count myself any less of a climber in the Peak Distinct of Attainment. Starting out I would spend hours rambling around the Internet Movie Data Base, searching out writers who I respected and scrutinize the year of their first big break with the year of their birth. If I calculated that they had made it in, say, their early twenties. I'd become agitated and depressed. But if I found out that they'd made it, say, in their late thirties, I'd rejoice; "there's still time," I would think, "I still have an enough years to break on through". This is a ridiculous practise, of course. It helps to develop your skills as a writer in no way whatsoever, while simultaneously injecting severe doubt and insecurity into your head. Comparing careers is like crack cocaine for the struggling writer - the laptop and data base sites become the paraphernalia and the information becomes the freebase. I've been off it for years, but sometimes, late at night, I'll catch myself on doodle.com checking out Anthony Neilson's D.O.B.

As I carried on up the mountain of Making It I found that, like all promises of promised lands, there were pit stops, sub divisions, side roads and above all mirages. Another person's accomplishment was another's disappointment, and one's person's perceived failure was...you get the idea. When I was in York one time for a new playwrights conference I met a fellow scribe who knew me by name - we'd never met before but he had heard about me and was "very excited" to finally be introduced. I was flattered but I was also completely bemused. I did not consider myself successful in any sort of way (not according to my ordnance survey map of Great Achievement) but here was this lad looking at me thinking I was on the divine path to Making It Nirvana. Hmm.

When we finally get to Making It Nirvana we expect certain things to evaporate instantly. Such as loneliness and poverty. These of the two biggie burdens that we demand to be taken off our tired shoulders. Though this doesn't always happen. I know two very successful scribblers that have achieved the peak and still suffer the same old frustrations. A playwright friend of mine and winner of the prestigious George Devine Award was telling me the other day that he still can't afford to give up his day job in a bookstore. Even though he has commissions coming left right and centre and a residency at a top new writing theatre. Another writer I know whose show got 5 star reviews last year and was in the running for national awards, got so lonely at a party once that he ended up in a corner reading the Guardian. And not the fun G2 section either. This playwright had to fend off isolation with just the World Affairs pages. Ugh.

So even if you get to the summit you still have to contend with real life I guess. Real life never goes away. Which pisses me off somewhat as I was lead to believe that real life would be magically got rid of when you manage to reach Making It Nirvana. But then I consider - would I want real life to be disposed of? Would that make me, in some way, I don't know, artistically buggered? Think about the true success stories, the ones who rocket past the Making It plateau and storm into the realm where yes indeed real life can be blasted apart along with any kind of human struggle. These titans in the sky get million dollar deals and Oscars galore and then turn in very bad art very quickly. Their next project, once in the cosmos of success, is often rotten and riddled with clichés.
Is it possible perhaps that to continue to make good art, Making It Nirvana must always be kept out of reach, there to be climbed but never conquered?

I clicked on my trusty explorer icon and put into Google this desperate question: how many hours a day should you write? The first site to appear was a Yahoo Answers message board . The best answer (chosen by the asker) went as follows: "I write for about 8-9 hours a day. It's very hard work! It depends on how fast I am writing. Sometimes I'll write 20 words a day, and sometimes I'll write over 2000! But usually my goal of the day is to write a chapter of the book I'm writing (My chapters are about 10-20 pages long). Good luck, and have fun writing!" GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN WRITING?! I'd commit suicide twice if I had to write 9 hours a day. 9 hours a day. 9 hours a day? Who was this person? Stephen King? Thomas Pynchon? Martin Amis? No, it was: Soon_ To_ Be_ Mommy_4_Weeks_To_Go. That was her Username and that meant - I was presuming - she wasn't a professional ink layer. Just your average soon to be housewife and she was beating me on the commitment scale by 540 minutes to my 60 (not including YouTube breaks).

At this point I was in full despair mode and started on the self-flagellation; I'm a lazy, undisciplined piece of work that does not deserve to kiss the boot of Soon To Be Mommy 4 Weeks To Go or anyone else who's ever lifted a brio. Time to delete all plays and scripts and bring up that ASDA application form again. Before I sent My Documents to Dignitas I decided to watch an interview with David Foster Wallace on charlierose.com. Wallace is - or was (he tragically killed himself in 2008) the kind of writer that makes your soul sing in delight. He's that good. His magnum opus is Infinite Jest, 1079 pages of brilliant near future Meta fiction. My mind started spinning on rinse cycle at the thought of the number of hours he would put into his craft. I took a deep breath and prepared to be awed. But when the subject of writing day to day came up and what he would doing in a year out because of a grant he had just received Wallace said this "If past experience holds true, I will probably write an hour a day and then spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle worrying about not writing". At last, a writer who procrastinates as much as me and doesn't wear out the keys on his computer.

This little piece of info kept me afloat and then I found an interview with screenwriter Dan Roos at the wonderful makingof.com (if you have a weird fetish for viewing on set footage like I do, this sites for you) where he tells of his daily writing schedule and advice for beginning screenwriters - Make an appointment to write for an hour per day. Spend that hour either writing on your current project or in a journal. Sometimes you'll spend 10 minutes writing in the journal and 50 on the project at hand and sometimes you'll spend 10 minutes on the project and 50 minutes on the journal. Doesn't matter because at least you're putting words on the page. Every day. This is liberating for a whole set of reasons; Writing 10 pages of screenplay a day is instantly intimating. Ever looked at ten blank pages? Feels like looking into the abyss. Whereas working for a mere hour doesn't have the same awful ring to it. Also in an hour you can write 10 pages, or 6 or 2. But because you've set the goal as an hour of desk time you feel like you've accomplished something.

By this time my heart rate was back to normal. Then I remembered a foreword written by the playwright David Watson who talked about the importance of "thinking time". I too believe in thinking time. Some of my best ideas, characters, scenes or lines have come out of just walking around having a good think. However if you do this and don't scribble down what you've thought, the gems will flutter out of your head. That's where the hour a day writing appointment comes in handy.

When I had fully calmed down I began to wonder about some of the 12 hour, full working day boasts that I had read in Waterstones. I also began to ponder on the writer's preference for exaggeration. The screenwriters who were being interviewed for the book knew that other scriptwriters - their competitors - were being interviewed as well and perhaps they figured that if they didn't make out like they were sweating 24/7 they would be looked down upon, perhaps even lose work. In other words I thought they may have been telling fibs. Like all writers do. Like I've done. 60 minutes per day? Come off it - More like 20 minutes (including YouTube breaks).

My name is Dominic Mitchell and I am one of the writers on the BBC Northern Voices scheme.