I should’ve stopped at one coffee, shouldn’t I?

So at the moment, I’m writing this play.

It was this idea I had, because I have such limited writing time, that I would write this play using my standup gigs as an opportunity to test things out as I went along. And it would help me to get a start on writing my first full length show now that I’m on this weird standup comedy path which has taken me by surprise, but seems to be something I am beginning to really enjoy.

I was going to enter the play in this competition (I really must write one day about the impact of competitions on my life, because I think they are an interesting phenomenon), not because I thought I would win, or would even be in with a chance – I’ve never written a play before – but because of all the benefits you do get from entering competitions (for example, deadlines). As I say to the mister, over and over again, you can’t underestimate the power of a deadline.

But it seems perhaps you can. Underestimate that power, I mean. I really don’t think I’m going to get it done. It’s just the thing that in between everything else keeps getting pushed to the back of the line. Over the last week, I’ve been thinking look, just give the idea of the competition away and give yourself time to do it properly, but then last night when I wasn’t really watching Australian Idol, because I couldn’t bear it, but couldn’t stop watching it (and if I wrote that post about competitions, I would tell you why I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it), I was reading 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and I see where Sex, Lies, and Videotape was ‘written in just eight days’. But then, I’m no Steven Soderbergh, and he probably didn’t have to pick the children up from school at three o’clock over the course of those eight days.

Plus, I’ve had two coffees today, and I can’t concentrate. Which you might be able to tell from the range of incoherent thoughts in those sentences and paragraphs above.

So, now I don’t really know what to do with these three hours which I have blocked out for this play and which must not, under any circumstances, be used for anything else. Not acupuncture, not phone calls, not other writing projects. And definitely not for defrosting a pot of that rather delicious potato soup and buttering a piece of that rather delicious fresh bread and then sitting in front of Dr Phil.

UPDATE: the soup is just a leeetle bit lemony