I’ve been laid up for the last few days with an insect bite that turned nasty and has made my leg swell to elephantine proportions – taking antibiotics, but really the only cure is rest…So my leg is elevated and I can’t do too much. Ideal you would have thought for doing some writing…erm…no…Maybe I’ve got Writer’s Block…I certainly can’t seem to just sit down and write the way I usually do…most days I fire up the laptop, open a document and go for it…write plenty of words (most of them utter rubbish, but still…). For the last week or two my brain has simply turned to colourless mush entirely incapable of stringing more than a few words together. So in the best procrastinators tradition I have seen far, far too much of the internet and far too many kittens….

Some writers swear by simply hitting the ground running and writing whatever comes to mind first – in fact that’s the way I do most of my writing – just write and worry about the sense in the rewrites. I’m not a believer in waiting for the ‘muse’ to strike – I think you’ll wait all year, or all your life. I often wonder if that’s how the likes of J.D.Salinger writes – after producing the wonderful Catcher in the Rye, nothing of any substance has been produced since…or certainly, not published. Reading about Salinger though, it seems that he writes every day but purely for his own enjoyment – the very best way to write. So he doesn’t wait for the muse or divine inspiration, but just gets on with it.

I think most things that require us to be active in some way are too easy to put off or put aside…everyone loves to procrastinate…there are always so many interesting things on TV, the internet, hidden under the bed, in the back of the wardrobe, anywhere in fact rather than sitting down and writing or doing your tax return…Actually that reminds me, I need to do mine…I bet I get it done before I get much writing finished….