a note for first-timers

If it's your first time here and you're new to blogs, the first post you'll see is the most recent so that's where you should be ending, rather than starting. Otherwise, carry on...

Please, feel free to comment - you know you want to.

sleeplessness

Have I used that one before? I don't think so, but, given how often I seem to use the "lessness" suffix, I wouldn't be surprised.

So, I can't sleep. Again. Part of it, I'm sure, is the fact I'm attempting to fall asleep in a sauna, but there's a whole lot going on in my head these days and, well, I find myself really rather restless and unable to clear my mind enough to get twenty - let alone forty! - winks.

This evening I thought I might as well take advantage of the extra hours I knew would be available to me so I started writing. And when I say "writing", I mean with ink and parchment and all that jazz. Well, a biro and a pad of lined A4 paper anyway. And it was going so well too! Until the bloody biro stopped working. I've never understood how those things work - or, more accurately, how they don't work. You look at that bit of plastic that runs down the length of the pen and it looks pretty much full... and yet, try as you might, the damn thing won't do any more than leave an indent - an etching, if you will - in the paper.

So I came on here to type it instead, so disheartened was I with the biro situation. The romance has gone out of it these days, I think. I remember being at school and thinking how exciting it must have been to have lived the life of an author or playwright. They always seemed - in my imagination at least - to wear flouncy clothes and strode (minced, perhaps, considering their clothes) about the place with a quill in one hand and a leather-bound book in the other. Quite where they kept the inkwell is anyone's guess - and I'll thank you not to put forth ideas and suggestions about that in any comments on here. *ahem*

I currently have a couple of pages of, very probably, utter rubbish. No doubt I'll clear the page and start again when I resume. If I resume. No, I will. I've decided that I really should have a crack at this fiction writing lark. When you encounter a book that was a Richard and Judy recommendation and find yourself wondering how anyone could want to read such drivel, you get these thoughts in your head of the "I could do better than that!" variety. And I could. It might not be great either, but surely better than that!

And with that declaration of self-love, I bid you all a good night. If you need me, I'll be awake and thinking about absolutely everything.