So I haven't written anything for a while. Not for any particular reason; just haven't found the time (or more realistically made the time). Not the way to become a writer I guess.

But doesn't life so rudely intrude? You think I'll write at night, when I've had my tea, washed the dishes and ironed my clothes and then your eyes are heavy, your head aches and it's all you can do to brush your face and wash your teeth before collapsing into your plump bosom of a bed.

So instead your brain, constant creator of plots and twisted tales, a wily but scarred veteran of bodily coups, decides : Mornings! First thing! Can't be tired if you've done nothing else! Problem solved. It chatters happily to itself, leaving you to your own devices for a time. You forget.

The alarm goes off at five-thirty sharp and you spring energetically from bed, all that potential released and realised in a supernova of creative energy. You bounce into the kitchen to get the coffee filter on the go - astronauts need rocket fuel! - and bound into shower. Soak, soap, lather, rinse and quickly swaddled by the embrace of a still warm towel.

No, you don't. I know you don't and you know you don't. Plain fiction is what it is (but maybe that's what you're good at?). So your writing suffers. You don't practice. You don't vent. Words and letters swirl in your subconscious until finally they are overflowing: you are drowning in alphabetti spaghetti.

What cost not writing? Keeping it all in?

You'll burst you will. Pop like an overblown balloon but without the deprecating chuckles afterwards.