At school, I feared English. My teacher, Mr Griffiths, was great, but my essays and coursework never lived up to much. I am not a natural scholar and I have dyslexia, so school was a daily struggle. I didn’t want the other children to know how hard I found everything, so I became the class clown, which I know is a tired cliche for a comedian, but it is true. I realised that if I was the person acting the fool and making people laugh, no one would notice how often I was getting the lowest marks in the class and extra time in exams.

I was embarrassed, too. It is really annoying if you know exactly how you want to express yourself, but you can’t get it down on the page. If you had told me when I was at school that one day my words would be printed in a newspaper, I would have thought you were pulling my leg.

Cut to nearly 20 years later and I can’t think of anything nicer than having a whole day to myself to write, mostly standup, but sometimes articles, scripts or pitches for TV shows. There is something hugely exciting about a blank page. Writing comedy is particularly fun. I like sitting at my little table, jotting things down in my notepad all day, then heading to a comedy club in the evening and testing my new gags in front of an audience, sometimes to roars of laughter, other times to complete silence – it is all part of the joy.

I love a new notebook; I usually get a couple for Christmas. I especially like A4 ones with ruled pages and a hard back. Annoyingly, I usually lose one a year, but I have never worried about someone finding them and stealing all my great (often not) ideas, as my handwriting is so awful that you would assume the pad had fallen out of the backpack of a child who was learning English as a foreign language – it is all smudged lines, spelling mistakes and scribbles.

I enjoy writing now because it is on my own terms. No one is marking it – except for you, right now, deciding whether to continue reading. If you don’t, I will never know.

I would recommend writing to everyone. Even if no one else sees my work, it is great to get the cacophony of thoughts rattling around in my head down on a page – it feels like a kind of release, like I breathe easier afterwards, especially in the hustle and bustle of modern life. A cup of tea, a fountain pen, a couple of sheets of paper – it is lovely. Go on, treat yourself.

Suzi Ruffell: Nocturnal is at the North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford, on 1 February, then touring until 17 May

• Read more stories of change in the G2 special issue A new start on 31 December