In spite of spending the last two weeks telling myself that today is the day I am going to sit down and start writing, I have only managed five pages of rough notes so far.  It’s extraordinary how much time I can waste doing anything other than sit down at my computer and write.   Actually getting to the computer isn’t too much of a problem; it’s the opportunities for procrastination that it offers, especially now that I have broadband.  I have never been one for surfing the internet, but as soon as Chapter 1 beckons, there I am, Googling like mad on the tenuous grounds that it is really “research”. 

I’ve decided to open the book with my hero and heroine meeting on a leadership development course.  There’s not much call for leadership development when you’re an author, but I have plenty of friends who seem to spend their whole time being sent on these courses.  One was very miffed to find that on some psychometric test for work personalities, she turned out to be a peacock, as opposed to a nice, friendly dolphin, and I want to use this in the opening scene.  I’ve been Googling management training or leadership development + peacock + dolphin + owl + panther and getting hundreds of sites coming up, many of them obscurely zoological and no help at all.  I have learnt a lot about the opportunities for corporate training, though.  There is no limit to the fun days that can be had “team building” by shooting paint at each other or learning how to sculpt chocolate.  It’s enough to make one want to get a proper job.

After all that surfing, however, I am still only on page 5 and none the wiser as to what my characters are actually doing on this course.  The thought of writing ten chapters seems utterly impossible at the moment, and I cannot even imagine getting to the point where I type ‘The End’ but I suppose it will happen.  Somehow, sometime (and please God, let it be soon) I will get my act together and start filling the pages.  It doesn’t matter what rubbish it is; at this stage, all I want is to produce 30 or 40 pages of inanities and question marks and notes like ‘kiss +++’ so that I have something to start from when I go back and start all over again.  I’m going to give myself the next three days to do that, and having tidied my study, emailed absolutely everyone I can think of, updated the website and ticked everything off my ‘to do’ list (except ‘Write Book!’), I’ve got no excuses left.  It’s time to get ON with it …