My inhability to start in time is crippling. Any social event - people’s birthdays, drinks with friends, family dos, anything - gets swept aside and cancelled, because there’s this voice inside my head screaming, “I HAVEN’T STARTED WRITING!” I wake up, shower, have a coffee, watch telly, go to town, buy some food, putter about, buy a magazine, come home, e-mail, make phone calls, watch more telly, and it goes on and on and on until I go to bed again, and a whole day’s gone. It’s just vanished. Every single minute of day, every single sodding minute, is labelled with this depressing, lifeless, dull thought: I’m not writing. I make the time vanish. I don’t know why I do this. I even set myself little targets. At 10am, I think, I’ll start at noon. At noon, I think, I’ll make it 4pm. At 4 pm, I think, too late now, I’ll wait for tonight and work till late. And then I use TV programmes as crutches - ooh, must watch this, must watch that - and then it’s 10pm and I think, well, start at midnight, that’s a good time. A good time?! A nice round number! At midnight, I despair and reckon it’s too late, and stay up despairing. I’ll stay that way till 2 or 3am, and then go to bed in a tight knot of frustration. The next day, the same thing. Weeks can pass like that. I’m wondering if describing it to you might break the cycle. Probably not.