If everyone has a book in them, they also now all have time to write it. Well, stab me in the fucking eye with a Bic. Could I please have a handful of salt to rub in these wounds while I work away in my goddamn DAY JOB?

EVERYONE has one book in them, the saying goes, but the problem – or the excuse – has always been finding the time to write it. No longer.

For practitioners of the latest literary trend, Lay-off Lit, time is what they suddenly have bundles of. The question now is how to weave it into literary gold.

Lay-off Lit joins Chick Lit, Dick lit (lovable lads), Miz Lit (desperate childhoods) and Pit Lit (tough types from northern mining towns make good) in a growing line of easy-definition genres making bookshelves bend and publishers grin.

But its emergence also reflects real cultural forces: Lay-off Lit is written by those whose response to being made jobless by the global financial crisis was to reach for a pen and finally write that book.