Wasting time

As a writer, you have some days where everything just flows.  You fingers glide across the keyboard, clicking and clacking as they perform some elaborate dance which inevitably results in several thousand words of sheer, quivering brilliance.

Other days, things aren’t so simple.  On these days you fingers don’t dance, so much as hover just above the keys, tentatively prodding the occasional button as if it may explode at any minute.  On these days you drink more tea than usual.  The news websites are more interesting.  You have to organise your email inbox and create mail folders for everyone you’ve ever met, just in case any of your long lost school friends should drop you a line out of the blue.

For me, today is the latter.  I have been awake for six hours, and have yet to write anything I’m supposed to be writing.  That’s not to say I haven’t been constructive, though.  I’ve finally managed to track down a shop which stocks Irn Bru (soft drink of the gods) AND I’ve played Windows Solitaire for a bit.  That’s a full day’s hard graft in anyone’s book, surely?

Yesterday was better.  Yesterday I finished one of the two books I have to do for Egmont, writing the entire final third in the space of just a few hours.  Maybe that’s the problem.  Maybe I’m suffering from burn-out.  Perhaps a nice cup of tea would help.  And a read of the papers.  And after that, maybe just a few hands of Solitaire.  That should help recharge the batteries.