Archives: Writing

No, not like that, you dirty-minded little ratbag.  Hehe – I said ratbag.

No, swinging as in modd-swings, as in ups and downs and roundabouts – a very Miton Keynes kind of blues.

Today’s been full of it.  Every particular kind of “it” you can imagine.  Except that one.  I’ve been up, down, and all around, trying to work out what on earth my head, body, mind, brain, chest, feet and hands are up to.

I’ve decided the answer is that I don’t know.

Having spent the weekend doing nothing, following two days of doing nothing, I’m feeling somewhat bored of nothing-ness.  Today was supposed to be a better day because a) I’ve spent 4 days doing nothing, so I must have improved, even just a little and b) I actually had something to focus on – a telephone interview with David Seaman (ex of England and Arsenal) for CF Talk.

It started slowly (the day, that is, not the interview), it taking me a while to wake up, but I did get up with a good deal less pain than I’ve had for the last few days.  This morning’s discomfort was more in the line of “aches” than pains, which I attribute largely to muscular discomfort after over-compensating for the positions which caused me pain over the weekend.

After dropping K off at work, I prepared for the interview, but when I phoned, David was out (how inconsiderate).

I then sat around for the rest of the morning and I have honestly no idea what I did in the 3 hours between phoning DS and speaking to him when he phoned me back this afternoon.

I’d rather given up on the idea of speaking to him today, actually, and was hugely tired before he did call.  I toyed with the idea for a while of leaving an out-going voicemail message saying, “Hello David Seaman, thanks for calling back, I’m just having a bitof a nap at the moment, but let me know when you’re free and I’ll call you back when I wake up.”

Thought it might seem a bit odd.  Especially if the BT man rang.

Still, I managed to prise my eyes open long enough to hang on for his call.  I managed to stay awake all through the interview, too, which I took to be a good thing because I can’t help feeling it’s a little rude to nod off when talking to a celebrity over the phone.

As it happened, I’m not sure he would have minded, since he seemed like a really lovely bloke.  I managed to glean lots of interesting bits and bobs from our half-hour chat today, including the fact that he is a huge INXS fan, which I promised not o hold against him, in the same way I tried not to hold it against him that he captained the Arsenal side which beat Southampton in the 2003 FA Cup final I was in Cardiff for.

I also learnt he owns a Geri Halliwell album.  He claims it’s his wife’s.

After that, though, things seem to have gone downhill.  (In my day, not the interview, that is).

I picked K up from work and took myself off to bed, where I dozed for an hour or so, then propped myself up in bed with a cuppa to read for a while, but found myself feeling distinctly unpleasant after not too long.  This rampant see-sawing of  wellness has started to drag in the most incessant way.

I’m finding it harder and harder to stay on an even keel mentally when my body sees fit to flip-flop all over the place physically.  It’s not that I seem to be changing from day-to-day, it’s that I can change from hour-to-hour, one minute up and full of energy, ideas and get-up-and-go and the next minute with less energy than a battery-run bunny after a 10-hour run-off against the Duracell dude.

If only there was a pattern or a rhyme or reason to what was happening or when it happened, I would at least be able to square it in my head so that I was prepared for the sudden on-rush of bleakness.  But the constant swinging from state to state creates such an enormous  flux through the day that I find it impossible to anticipate and I find myself being dragged down mentally as soon as I flag physically.

I am hoping against hope that the next few days bring a renewed strength and chance to focus myself on to some of the things I really want to do, because much more of this flip-flopping, see-sawing, up-downing and I think I really might go mad.

Either that or I’ll find myself watching day-time TV, which is the same thing, really.

I’m nothing if not reliable – I’m quite liking this new era of being able to work out what my body’s telling me, it’s certainly better than the confusion leading up to Christmas this year (see Nov/Dec’s posts for more) – as yesterday and today I find myself back on the wagon and with enough energy to get through the day again.

Not only that, but I’ve also found the time (and inclination) to start a new ball rolling.  Yesterday, for the first time in nearly 3 years, I think, I actually sat down and started writing a new play.  It’s only small, and not very grand, but with 8 pages down on the first day, I can really seee where it’s going, which is somethin of a rarity for me when I first start projects.

It’s actually based on a couple of ideas I’ve had for quite a while, but have only recently strung together to make a sensible whole.  The whole thing kicks off with an image/scene I’ve had in my head for ages, but not been able to find the right context to put it into.

One of my biggest problems when I start out writing is knowing where things are going to go and knowing that there is some conflict there which will drive the story/plot.  Many of my abandoned attempts at plays in the past have fallen by the wayside because nothing happened in them.  As good an ear for dialogue as I think I have, all talk and no substance doesn’t make for a very interesting play.

So I’ve kicked off the new one with a cracking first 8 pages at the first sitting and I’m hoping to keep up with around 5 pages a day in the hope of getting a first draft done by the time I go into hospital for my next planned course of IV’s at the start of April.  From there, if I like it, I’m thinking of submitting it to the Verity Bargate Award which Soho Theatre runs every year.

It’s about time I actually started to put my scripts out there and stopped sitting around at home calling myself a writer with nothing but a couple of 10-page Youth Theatre pieces to show for it.  I also plan to redraft an old script of mine which I workshopped when I was out in Texas – I’ve got reems of notes on it, but never seem to have managed to get into the groove of turning it around.

I don’t know if it’s the spring sunshine, the move away from the cold, dreary winter nights, or the knowledge after Laughter for Life that I really can achieve something if I set my mind to it, but I seem to have found not just inspiration, but motivation thrown in.

I’m all too aware of the ease with which my motivation can drop, so I’m keen to harrness it while I can.  And once I’ve built up some momentum, hopefully it’ll just keep coming.

And now I’ve blogged about it, of course, I’ll have plenty of people popping their heads in to ask how it’s going, which is only going to make me work harder, since the only other option is learning how to lie convincingly about what I’ve managed so far – and that’s just not me.

It’s been a bit of a weird week this week – I appear to have been either out of the house working or running errands, or asleep.  It’s a bit all-or-nothing.

After travelling home on Monday I was shattered, but ok with a bit of an afternoon nap, then I had Tuesday morning to laze around before being on Taxi duty for K (through choice not compulsion, I must add).

Then yesterday, K started her new job (yay!), which meant I was up at 8am to get her there (boo), and then found myself coming home and passing out on the bed again till the afternoon – not intentionally, but when your body’s bossing you around after a weekend like mine, you listen.

Then last night it was back to normality with my session at MKT with the Youth Theatre.

I say “normality”, but it’s not every week that I get to spend 20 minutes shooting part of a short film with Samantha Janus just after she’s come off stage in Guys and Dolls.  Even by my celeb-bumping-into standards, this was a bit on the surreal side, my friend Helen (who’s the dep wardrobe mistress on the show) having spoken to her and got her to agree to do us a favour and pop up in cameo in our opening film for the YT show.

She was lovely, and very accomodating, especially since we literally accosted her straight off stage, at a time when I would imagine most performers just want to be left alone to veg out – especially with another show starting in just over 2 hour’s time.  But she happily stood around and delivered her line of dialogue for us enough times for us to cover it and we left her to it.

The rehearsal itself was very good again.  I spent the first part working with the Chorus on the piece I’d written, which was good fun, although slightly odd to be blocking something I’ve had in my head.  It’s what I love about working with performers, though, because it really gives you a chance to work through things and see how they work -and if it’s your own script, you can chop it and change it as much as you like.

The second half of the session was back with my Hamlet trio, who again worked diligently and have formed a great little grouping.  They were struggling slightly to get to the meaning behind some of the Shakespearean waffle, but we worked through it and managed to get through to what lies underneath the flowery poetry and make it make a bit more sense.

Although the show’s not too far away now (and if they’re reading this, they really need to be learning their lines!!), I think this piece has the potential to really show how talented some of our young people are.  Combined with the piece that Suze is directing – called After Juliet, a modern take on the aftermath of the Romeo and Juliet story – it’s a chance for our older members to really show some flair for the dramatic, and we both know that they’ve got the range and the power to do it.

That’s not to say it’s not going to take a considerable amount of work on their part, and support for them on ours, but if the work goes into it, they could make it something really special.  Of course, if they don’t, there’s the worrying prospect of it coming out as a group of youngsters lost in a mire of misunderstood poetry.  But that’s the challenge.

I’m hoping that this weekend is going to provide a nice window of relaxation for me – a chance to stay in bed, or veg on the sofa and do as little as possible, whilst shoe-horning as many calories as possible down my throat to keep energy levels high and infections at bay.

It may have left me struggling for energy, but I’m determined that the weekend isn’t going to take me down!

I’ve had a brilliant day today, taken up mostly with a mammoth 4-hour meeting with Suze and Rheya about the MKT show this April.

The show, which is going to be in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, will be something of a gala performance for the Activ8 Youth Theatre, with whom Suze and I have worked (on-and-off on my part) for the last 5-6 years.  We’ve never had the opportunity to start with such carte blanche as we’ve been given here, and it’s fantastic – if a little daunting.

The Youth Theatre have been lucky in the past if they secured a single performance date in a 12-month period, so to have this show coming so quickly off the back of the summer show is exciting in and of itself, but to have such free reign to make the most of our stage time is a fantastic opportunity for all the children and young people involved.

So far, we’re looking at doing devised pieces for the youngest three groups, and then a combination of devised, scripted and new-writing pieces with the oldest group – who have mostly been with us for a long time and will no doubt be raring to display the many facets of stage-craft they’ve had the chance to develop working with a practitioner as accomplished and, let’s face it, off-the-wall as Suze.

Today’s meeting was spent hammering out exactly what each group would be doing – allowing for the fact that the rehearsal process is sure to kick up a few new challenges and options on the way – and also going over a few storylines for some of the devised pieces which needed solidifying before we past them back to the groups to continue working.

The groups have already been working on some of the stuff that will be incorporated into the performance in the last term, but the ideas they’ve developed will all be picked up and run with over the course of the next 10 weeks leading up to the show.  The idea is that we’ll be using familiar material but probe deeper into it to make sure we’re challenging them to come up with something that will push them and make the most of the showcase they’ve been offered.

I’m most excited about the fact that I’m due to return to rehearsals on Wednesday and Suze has offered me the opportunity to write part of the show and to direct a separate section with some of the older group involved.  It’s been so long since I’ve directed anything from scratch that I’m REALLY looking forward to it and can’t wait to get going.

The section I’m working on is an amalgam of scenes from Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead – a show I’ve always wanted to direct in its entirety.

I have to confess I’ve been a little on the tired side after our enormous brain-storming/planning session, but I feel so jazzed at the thought of being part of this show.  It’s wonderfully exciting to be working with the groups towards something that will really show their families and, hopefully, the wider community, what they are capable of doing.

Tickets are available NOW from the Milton Keynes Theatre box office 0870 060 6652 (with a booking fee) or online here. (plug, plug)

In other news: my new BlackBerry arrived today, too!!  After all my to-ing and fro-ing with O2 (the phone company, not the oxygen people), I managed not only to secure a free upgrade to the BlackBerry, but also to upgrade my call plan to double the minutes (400) and ten times the texts (1,000) per month for the same money.  And I only wanted the phone….

Unfortunately, since it arrived I’ve been castigated by K after spending all morning and half the afternoon in a meeting for then getting so wrapped up in my new toy that I’ve hardly paid any attention to her all day. 

I’d like to make a witty-yet-cutting riposte to show her that she’s completely in the wrong and I’m smugly in the right as usual, but I really can’t defend myself on this one, so I’m going to slope off and use my apologetic face.

EMILY UPDATE: For those of you still keeping tabs on Em (of which I know there are tons) she’s still doing well.  She’s still on the vent for the moment, but her family say things are looking good for now.  Thanks to you all for your love, prayers and support – I know they’re greatly appreciated. 

EMILY UPDATE:

As updated on Friday, Emily came through the surgery well and is currently in intensive care.  They made an attempt to wean her off her ventilator today, but she didn’t take to it too well and has been sedated again.  This isn’t a major issue, as it is quite common for the de-ventilation (as it were) to take a little while, what with the mixture of sedation, pain meds and new cocktails of anti-rejection drugs.  She has become slightly more awake and alert at points and is showing good signs of her old bubbly personality in flashes, so things are looking cautiously optimistic at the moment.

As for me, well, the last two days have been pretty up and down.

One of the weirdest things at the moment is how other people seem to think that I’d be really adversely affected by Em’s transplant – perhaps expecting me to be jealous or angry, the old “why not me?” chestnut.

But the truth is, I don’t feel anything like that at all.  I’m completely overwhelmed with joy for Em and her family and devoted boyfriend – I couldn’t be happier for them all, and especially seeing such a close friend going through what we’ve both been hoping for for the last two years.  It feels odd, because there’s a part of me that thinks I should be feeling some pangs of jealousy or upset, but it just isn’t there.

It has made me think a lot more about my own transplant, but actually in a much more positive light.  I have to confess that I have had moments, particularly over the last few weeks leading up to Christmas, where I have been doubting my conviction that this will come for me, and I still don’t like to hear people talk about it with such certainty in their voices. 

But I know that Em has been through patches like me as well – particularly in the summer when she had an exceptionally bad spell and was touch-and-go for a while, and we spoke about it afterwards.  And I know that although she had her doubts, she never lost faith and never stopped fighting, right up to her call.  She’s set a kind of positive-thinking example to me and perked up not only my enthusiasm, but also my previously rigid belief that this will come for me too.

Secretly, I also have to admit I’m quite pleased she got in there first, because she’ll now be on hand to help talk me through all the relevant stages of post-op recuperation as I come across them!

The last few days have been a bit rubbish for me, though, since I’ve started to feel really sick after my evening meal for the last three nights in a row now and the pattern is becoming a little disturbing.

The first night, on Friday, I had a horrible moment of thinking I was coming down with the same virus that hit K on Christmas day and that has slowly been working its way through her family.  But so far I’ve not actually been sick.

Another theory that struck me yesterday was that, having spent two afternoons back at the flat trying to get it ship-shape before we aim to move back in over the next couple of weeks, all the dust and stuff we’d been kicking up has upset my chest and made me more productive, which in turn I’ve been coughing up and swallowing a lot – causing not-too-goodness in my stomach.

Although that seemed a plausible explanation yesterday, it seems less so today, when I’ve done nothing but chill out at my ‘rents.  And it also doesn’t explain why it’s only in the evenings, either.

It’s not too bad, just annoying that I can’t seem to eat in the evenings without feeling like I’m going to hurl for a couple of hours afterwards.  It goes off slowly over the course of the evening, but it’s not very pleasant to have to put up with.

Still, things could be worse and my chest is still doing very well a week into the New Year.  I’m waking up every morning with lots of energy and get-up-and-go and I’m hopeful of a successful move back to the flat in the coming week or so, which will be lovely not just for K and me, but doubtless for Mum and Dad, too.

So next week is a chance to start focusing back on work, with the start of a new term at MKT and a show to build towards, as well as time to start turning my attention to the next issue of CF Talk.  And then, of course, there’s all my writing projects, too….

It’s been a bit of a quiet, stay-at-home kind of day today, spent largely on the sofa chilling out.  I have, however, managed to do my first piece of real writing for ages and I’m really pleased with it.

It’s an odd thing, writing.  I love doing it and when I sit in front of a screen with a real purpose to my ideas, I seem to be able to rattle things off at speed.  The 6-page scene I wrote today, which is something that will hopefully be part of the Youth Theatre show in April, took me a little under an hour to write, although I must confess I wrote the verse part of it over the course of an hour waiting for K yesterday.

It seems that when I have a deadline to write to is when I do my best writing and when my mind focuses most clearly on what it’s trying to do and say.  If I’m just sitting there of my own volition, tapping away at the keys and seeing where I end up, it doesn’t come in the same way.

What this means, of course, is that once I start getting commissioned and paid for my work and I’m a top-flight, in-demand scriptwriter and playwright, I’ll be knocking out classics left, right and centre (OK, OK, but stay with me), whilst right now I need to find that spur to keep me going when I don’t have an identifiable goal to achieve in front of me.

People say the key to it is to make sure you write a little every day, no matter what it is.  Specifically, I’ve heard it said that you should set yourself a page or word target that you must hit no matter what.  The trouble with those plans is that I always just end up writing drivel to fill the quota and end up hating myself for being so uncreative and unimaginative.  And when you think you’ve lost it, your enthusiasm for the project drops off the face of the planet.

All of which does nothing really to solve my dilemma, but it’s nice to be writing again and reading my own words on a page.  There’s still something wonderful about reading back over scripts that have just emerged from your head through your fingers and ended up as a formatted file on a hard drive and ink-on-paper in front of you.

It never ceases to amaze me when I sit at a computer that in a matter of a few hours I can turn out something really quite readable to fill a blank page and possibly more.

My head tells me that I need to set myself some time aside everyday to try to achieve something in writing, even without self-imposed artificial quotas and the like, but at the same time I know that if I set myself a timetable and don’t stick to it or am too tired to achieve it, I’ll just get down about it.

But enough of that – it’s all a bit unnecessary.

Today I watched FIELD OF DREAMS with K on the sofa and absolutely loved it.  It was a Christmas gift from her because I had told her I’d not seen it and I’d heard lots of good things about it from lots of people, so I finally sat down to watch it today. 

It’s a lovely little film, filled with a beautiful kind of magic that you somehow just don’t question.  It’s one of those films with such wonderful heart that you forgive it it’s little foibles and unnecessaries and allow yourself to get swept up with the characters and their journey and the magic they’re experiencing.

And who knew Kevin Costner used to be so watchable?  And not in dodgy-accented, car-crash kind of terms?  I mean, he was almost like a real actor.  You’d have sworn he’d never do something as silly as make Waterworld.

I also wasted nearly an hour of my day on a programme about the Archers, which promised in it’s Sky+ blurb that it would follow the production team as they put together the show’s 15,000th episode – the kind of behind-the-scenes peek that I’ve always been addicted to.  But instead, it spent the vast majority of it’s time covering the whole of the back-story to this momentous episode. 

Which, when you’re covering a radio drama on TV, is somewhat dull.

Still, at least I watched that before I watched Field of Dreams, so I could have my memory of it wiped.

Also watched a great Mark Lawson interview with Armando Iannucci, one of the writer/producers behind things like The Day Today and Alan Partridge or, more recently, The Thick of It.  I love watching programmes about writers and programme makers and getting a glimpse into their various thought-processes and working practices.  It helps focus the mind onto things I want to do and ways in which I could drive myself forward.

Of course, we all know all I really need to drive myself forward is a deadline to write to.

Today’s been a really good day for me and I’m really pleased with myself for it, too. 

Yesterday, apart from slumming it on the sofa trying to urge my chest pains to go away, I spent the afternoon writing another article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free site – this time about Transplantation.

Em and Em, the partners in crime behind Live Life Then Give Life (from whom you should all have bought a T-shirt, not to mention signed up to the Organ Donor Register), organised another big publicity push for Christmas, which I sadly missed out on because of all my recent email hiccups and account confusions.

So, in order to still be doing my part, I mentioned the campaign to the guy who’d contacted me about writing my previous article to see if he was interested.  He said he was, so I spent the afternoon writing up a general summary of the status of transplant in the country and the various different systems around the world.

What I’m most pleased about it that he particularly wanted to stir up a bit of debate about the subject and if you go and check out the article online (here), you’ll find a lively exchange in the comments section underneath, which is really good to see.  Except maybe for the comment about my hair…

After being in the study working all afternoon, my chest was protesting a little again so I stayed on the sofa watching a movie in the evening and headed to bed at a sensible time. 

Better than anything was the fact that I got myself comfortable (not always possible with chest pains) and slept solidly through until 11am this morning – 12 hours sleep being something I’ve not enjoyed for as long as I can remember.  It was blissful to wake up and discover I’d been out like a light all night.  And it’s really recharging, too.

What I’m most pleased with today, though, is that I’ve stayed true to my promise to chill for the next few days before Christmas and have done very little again today.  I’ve been massively helped by the fact that I’ve had friends round to see me most of the day, which is good for sitting on the sofa chatting and not having to move or do other things.

But I’ve also been really good at doing physio sessions and stopping myself from “popping out” or sitting in the study at the computer for too long, or at the table in the kitchen reading the paper – all of which have a tendency to put extra strain on my chest and induce pain here and there.

Fingers crossed, I’ll be able to carry my discipline over to tomorrow, when I’ve got a little more planned, but am hoping that when I’m not out of the house, I’ll either be in bed or on the sofa doing nothing at all.  And K’s back from her parents’ tomorrow afternoon, so she’ll be around to police me.

I’ve been making myself chuckle this afternoon as my procrastination levels increase.  In fact, I’ve found a whole writers self-help website devoted to aiding folks like me to get down to the nitty-gritty of actually churning something out.

The last couple of nights I’ve hardly slept at all.  Monday night I was up until around 3am before finally dozing off, sleeping through till 11am save for an hour’s break in the middle around 6am to do much IVs.  Last night was worse – I didn’t manage to sleep at all until after my morning dose.

Oddly, it doesn’t appear to be your regular, run-of-the-mill, thinking-horrible-thoughts kind of insomnia.  Rather, it’s just that as I improve health-wise my brain is staying resolutely five strides ahead of my body.  So while I can’t do much physically during the day, my brain is aching to be put to use and if it’s not (as it hasn’t been) then it settles itself into manic thinking patterns when I hit the sack and keeps me wide awake, no matter how much my eyelids beg to differ.

So today I have been resolutely trying my best to a) stay awake all day and not take my usual afternoon nap and b) do things with my day that will make my mind feel like it’s had if not a real work out, at least a little bit of a gentle jog.

It struck me when I was  writing out my Christmas cards this afternoon that getting myself writing would be the most obvious method of productive mind-occupation, so I set that part of my brain that never stops whirring creatively to spin on ahead whilst I wrote, corrected and re-wrote the cards that kept being incorrectly filled in due to my non-multi-tasking man-brain.

Perhaps what I needed by way of a spur, I figured, was to tackle a branch of writing I’ve not tackled before – something different and fresh and intriguing to me.  I’ve written plays and I’ve written screenplays – I’ve even finished some of them, too.  So why not try something more narrative – a short story or similar?

In fact, it was the Stephen King interview I watched yesterday evening that provided my spark of inspiration – if I wanted to stir my creative brain and really test my mettle, why not try what writers used to do when they needed to churn something out (albeit usually for the cash than the creative momentum) and knock out a classic piece of pulp fiction?

Pulp fiction is that stuff that used to be known as Dime-Store Novels in the US and is more commonly known these days as Airport Fiction – that kind of crime-based, semi-plotted, under-characterised pap that you whistle through when you’re lying on the beach in the summer months trying not to remember that it’s only four more days till you’re back at work.

What better, I thought, than to pin myself down to knocking something out which needn’t have any literary merit at all, but merely serve as an exercise to show that a) I can still write and b) I can make myself focus on one thing for at least the space of time it takes me to write a chapter or two.

Of course, we all know that my mind doesn’t work like that.  Instead, I set off researching into pulp fiction and it’s current place in the literary world: is it still written, published, sold around the world?  Could I, conceivably, sell my mini-opus for publication when I’m done with it?

And research it I did.  I even answered most of my questions.  Which was annoying because it meant I had to come up with more questions so I didn’t have to actually start writing.

Surfing through the myriad writers’ websites dotted around the ‘net, I came across various tips for getting into good writing habits and avoiding said procrastination.  Eventually, I discovered an entire website devoted to a 30-day programme to help writers get organised and write.

That’s right: a 30-DAY PROGRAMME.  That’s an entire month’s worth of tips and exercises designed so that, at the end of the allotted period, you’re set to go write your masterpiece.  30 (Thirty) Days.  To get organised.  To AVOID procrastination.  It’s so funny, I can’t even do it justice with a smart-arsed quip.

Needless to say, I shall be sticking point-by-point the programme and ensuring that I don’t achieve ANYTHING by way of productivity before the New Year.  After all, if I don’t pay attention to the site I found, all my hard research work from today will have been for nothing, won’t it?

On my usual daily tour of my favourite websites today, I stopped in on my friend Em’s blog to discover the following paragraph, which so neatly encapsulated the to-ings and fro-ings of my mind and body at the moment I thought it silly to try to reword it to enlighten my readership and decided instead just to lift it wholesale and try to pass it off as my own.

“Sadly after 22 years I still don’t quite seem to have got my head round the concept of “improving” as opposed to “magically cured and reinstated with working lungs” and so the minute I feel a turn around I start jumping around and doing lots and then am surprised when said behaviour doesn’t go down well with my lungs which were (for want of a better phrase) breathing a sigh of relief that I was finally operating on a level they can maintain. I mentioned to my physio that you’d think I would have learned by now, she neatly sidestepped this remark by laughing politely and neglecting to comment.”

Sadly, my sense of duty and honour (and the knowledge that we have enough mutual friends for it to be highly unlikely that I wouldn’t get caught) meant I just couldn’t bring myself to fully commit to the stealthy liberation of the text.

I’d like to say my conscience was pricked by the knowledge that Em managed to write it from her hospital bed and went to all the trouble of emailing it to a friend and getting it posted for her, but I know if I did that then she’d eventually read this and send my huge screaming emails and numerous phone calls berating me for jumping on the pity band-wagon which we all so deplore.  Plus it’s also untrue, for that precise reason – pity is a trait all people should deplore. (Doesn’t that sound like a high school philosophy essay question? Pity is a trait all people should deplore: Discuss)

At the end of the day, when someone says what you want to say better than the way you wanted to say it, it’s best to hold your hands up and admit defeat than drive yourself barmy trying to best something that you can’t.

If you needed any proof of that, just take a look at what a complete and total load of waffle I’ve written trying to justify lifting a paragraph of a friend’s blog in order to help explain the challenges of getting back on your feet.

I think I should go and lie down.  Maybe this plagiarism lark is too heavy for me, after all.  Next time I’ll stick to my own drivel.

I’m clearly starting to reach sensible fitness levels as for the first time over the weekend, my mind has started to whir with possibilities of things I could be doing, or would like to do in the New Year.

Sadly, most of them are all things that will be beyond my reach before my Tx, but I suppose there’s no problem having some kind of roughly sketched plan for the future, however far away it may be.

At times like these, I find the difficult thing is to focus my mind on to one thing in particular and get something done.

Right now, for example, would be a perfect time to knuckle down and get some really good writing done.  Perhaps one of the new play ideas which have been circling my head – written up into draft form, or even just solidified in story terms.  Or perhaps taking an opportunity to look back over one of my few first-draft projects and hone them slightly.

Inevitably, though, I find myself enjoying my imagined new-life projects far too much and taking myself off into my fantasy new world while achieving nothing and taking no steps forward in the real world.

It seems silly, really, to become too swept up in the details and nitty gritty of the grand schemes I have laid out post-Tx when right now, planning whether or not I’m well enough to make a trip to Borders to finish the last of my Christmas shopping or treat myself to some new reading material.

What I need is some focus, and that’s what I’m heroically lacking in.  I say “heroically” as I’m blaming it on my brain as a way of coping with ignoring all the negative stuff that’s inevitably swirling around at celebration times and the turn of a New Year.

Yes, it helps to bluff oneself with the concept that you’re looking after yourself in the long run, and right now while you’re recovering physically, any kind of mental exertion is good, whether its practical or dream-based.  At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There’s also the question of the “holiday season” as some loathsome people are wont to call it, which is arriving like a speeding train and is just as likely to derail any well-laid plans anyway, so it’s yet another excuse for butt-sitting and job avoidance.

Indeed, it seems fairly clear sitting here bashing away at the computer during the half-time break of the Sheffield Utd vs. Aston Villa game on the TV that the blog is just now as much a procrastination tool as anything else.

Or maybe – just maybe – forcing myself to sit and write my little progress notes of an evening is going to finally instill a little bit of discipline into my daily routine and lead me down the path of finally focused achievement.

Any takers?