When reality intrudes

Ask a smoker what the worst situation they can be placed in and the response might surprise you. It won’t be the long journey in a 'no smoking' vehicle. It won’t be visiting someone that lives in a non-smoking house. It won’t even be the argument with a impassioned anti-smoker. It will be having a packet of cigarettes and no light. That’s worse than having no cigarettes at all.

It’s the same for a writer. Okay, as far as I know you don’t get cancer from writing and your clothes don’t stink (provided you can drag yourself away from the PC for long enough to have a shower) but there is a similarity –smokers and writers are both addicts.

Having no cigarettes is the equivalent of writer’s block – something that the non-writer knows about and thinks is the worst thing that can happen to them. I’ve rambled before about my Freewheeling Brian, a condition I feel more terrifying than writer’s block – but there is something worse! It’s having the packet of cigarettes and no light! You want to write, the story is there… But the time isn’t! Real life insists that you have to do something else rather than selfishly sit behind the PC and brain dump your dialogue…

My muse would appear to have take residence again. I am so close to completing my current work in progress, that I am desperate to get it over with – as I now know how I want to take the next play forward (I always try to work one play ahead of myself). But family life won’t permit me the time.

My youngest child has well and truly reached the age where they need to be in their own room, rather than spending the night with the wife and I. And in truth, the only reason that our youngest is still spending the night with us is because it makes us happy.

But the room is far from ready to accept a child. It needs decorating, carpeting, curtains fitted – not to mention actually having a door hung rather than the open frame it currently has.

So, my evenings are taken up with dubious quantities of DIY and my bad language. Yet all the time I am doing this, I feel guilty that I would rather be at the word processor finishing the play. I know that my family should come first – and I am putting them first… But I am slipping into schizophrenia. The characters are taking over my waking thoughts. I have to get them on paper to be free of them.

Then I look at the room – and my child’s face… I know what has to be done. Where did I put those new paint brushes?

Yeah… Smokers and writers – there are too many similarities…

Has anyone got a light?