Saturday morning

7am: Up early and determined to get cracking with chapter seven. Manage to spend two hours instead waffling around the Internet, reading fave blogs, checking emails etc.

9am: Mum tells me not to spend too long on my computer in case of ‘eye-strain’. I know she has a point but this instantly gets my back up. ‘I’m writing a novel!’ I want to dramatically cry, both fists in the air as I drop to my knees. But instead I say something intelligent like ‘derrr – this is what I do!’ Living at home again has officially reduced me back to my teenage years. And have I actually written any novel today anyway? Have I doodley-squat.

10am: Gone downstairs and poked at the strawberry plants in the garden. This is how I do ‘gardens’. One day when I have my own garden I may do more than poke, and prod. And eat, perhaps.

11am: Back in front of my computer. Chapter seven is long, I think. Too long, I worry. I write a bit more, and then look at the rest. It needs something, it needs… I wander off to get a coffee.

11.30am: Decide to read the whole thing through once again. Add a little touch to chapter four, even though I am not supposed to be looking at that bit at all again ever. Go back to chapter seven; add a bit more to it. Decide to highlight the bit I am stuck on by colouring the text in blue. This is usually a precursor to me chopping that part altogether – blue words be warned!

12pm: Wash hair, and sit downstairs in the sun reading ‘Smoke in the Valley: Austerity Britain 1948 – 51, by David Kynaston’. It has nice homely touches within this book, especially when using Mass Observation notes, but spends a lot of time on percentages and economics.

12.30pm: Chapter seven, you little devil you. Now I have changed that bit at the front, how do I get it to marry up with that bit in the middle? Those blue words are still there, mocking me. They were the bridge before, you see. And now I’ve broken the struts of one side, but do I build a new bridge, or do I mend the old? And do I sit here thinking bridges, or do I actually write something?

1pm: Dry hair. Grow red-faced under heat needed to straighten hair. In a rage take nail scissors to bits of hair that seem too hairy.

1.05pm: Whoops.

1.15pm: Okay, hair appointment made for next week. Until then will pretend am Lady Gaga and hair is some sort of fluffy installation art.