A new year… A new drive…?

At last, Christmas is over! Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy the festive season, but it tends to go on far too long for my liking. My father-in-law runs his own shop in Salisbury and he was under pressure to get the Christmas decorations up in the store in October!

In my family, we tend to have the visit by the ‘Christmas Tree Fairy’ the night before Christmas Eve. And the decorations came down last night.

It’s not just the commercialisation that puts me off Christmas – its more the things that you are ‘expected’ to do. Not just the four hours preparing and serving the Christmas Lunch, the buying presents for relatives you haven’t seen in many years, the hours wasted writing out cards to people that you haven’t seen this millennium (but have to respond because they sent you a card last year)…

My main disappointment is my own fault. With Christmas coming, I knew that I was going to be on leave. I set myself targets of that I was going to achieve over that leave period (I have a horrible habit of setting myself goals – leading me to feeling under pressure most of the time). But I thought that I was being realistic this time; I was only going to review the script (no major edits) that I wrote with my dear co-writer and complete a scenario for a 30-min play I want to send to a TV company.

How many of those did I achieve? Yep – none!

Why? My parents descended, we had to call on 5 couples, the kids fell ill for 4 days… 14 days leave meant that I only managed to get 4 solid hours behind the PC (when the wife and kids went to visit my in-laws for the night).

Now I’m presented with a huge list that needs to be completed:

• Edit the anthology of comic dramatic shorts
• Publish the above
• Review script written with co-writer
• Edit above
• Stage read-through of above
• Re-edit above
• Enter above into competition
• Complete scenario for 30-min play
• Write 30-min play
• Submit 30-min play
• Complete scenario for ‘The Breakfast Show’
• Write above
• Find cast for Anthology
• Produce Anthology for RNTF
• Redesign Website
• Pitch agents
• Pitch theatres
• Develop theatrical contacts

Okay – I do have all year to do this… But considering that I didn’t manage to get two simple things done over Christmas…

At least one positive came over Christmas; I gave up caffeine. I can’t believe how much this has changed my life! I sleep better, I’m more alert during the day and find that I can concentrate on a single task for far longer.

Let’s hope that this new vigour ends up in my writing and development.

Now which item on that list do I want to tackle first?