God, I’ve no idea how people find the time to write daily blogs! Updating this writing diary every six weeks or so is pressure enough for me. No sooner have I got it done than I have to put it on my ‘to do’ list again, where it sits for the next month, taunting me until I get to the stage (like now) where I say ‘All right ! I’ll do it, I’ll do it, just get off my list!’

The trouble is that I haven’t really got anything to say this month. I am in the mid-book doldrums, having struggled to the end of Chapter 6 last night. I hate this stage where it feels like I’ve been writing this story for ever and yet there still seems for ever to go … As always, I have left it to the last minute, and if I am to have the draft finished before Easter, I need to write four chapters in the six days I have left. It’s not unfeasible, and I’ve done it before now ( Contracted: Corporate Wife was written in an absolute panic) but I haven’t even got notes for the ending yet, and I am not entirely sure what’s going to happen. I know I want the last scene to be a wedding on the beach, but it’s not a lot to go on. I am feeling a bit tense about it, to be honest, so this probably isn’t the best of days for me to be updating the website (quite apart from the fact that I should be getting on with Chapter 7). Websites are supposed to be about self-promotion, but sometimes I wonder if it’s really worth all the effort of seeming relentlessly cheerful and positive the whole time. I can’t believe it really makes that much difference as to whether someone buys one of my books or not.

OK, enough with the grumbling. I am going to pour myself a nice drink and get back to the book. I have notes for the first two or three pages, so what am I complaining about. On past form, I will plod away turning those notes into polished prose (hah!), feel depressed at my lack of progress, decide to give up and go to bed, and then dash off another six pages of notes which will magically move the story into a place I can’t even imagine at the moment. So fingers crossed it will be like that again tonight … and that by the time I next get round to updating this, the book will be done and dusted, the deadline vanquished and because I won’t actually be having to write anything, I’ll be really enjoying being a romantic novelist again!