BarryHutchison

Today I:

1. Wrote a prologue
2. Met Santa
3. Fell asleep
4. Deleted the prologue
5. Wrote another one
6. Watched the X-Factor
7. Watched the X-Factor results
8. Realised I hadn’t eaten in 11 hours
9. Ate
10. Panicked that I hadn’t saved the second prologue
11. Realised I had
12. Wrote this blog

And that’s it.  On paper it almost looks like a busy day.  Almost.  Of course in reality it wasn’t.  I class Saturdays as working days, but spent perhaps one hour in total doing any actual writing.

That’s the great thing about being a writer, though.  You can spend a couple of hours actually putting words on a page, then spend the rest of the day thinking about some words you might eventually put on a page, and it counts as a full day’s work.

No other job on Earth allows such a slack work ethic, surely?  I mean, brain surgeons don’t spend an hour or so doing an operation, then waste the next five thinking about brains they might one day like to cut into, do they?  It’s a writer only thing, I think, and rightfully so.

I’m trying to resist commenting on X-Factor, but it’s proving difficult.  I won’t say anything about who should have gone out and who shouldn’t, but did you see Britney’s performance?!  It wasn’t just that she was miming, I’m not even sure she was miming to the right song.  I half expected her to stop in the second verse and say “Oh, we’re doing this one?”.  T’was terrible.