Why Productivity Really Doesn’t Work And I mean REALLY REALLY doesn’t work for me. I’ve given a lot of thought to this. The reason it’s taken up a lot of brain space is that I’ve been puzzling over the contradiction whereby I am a highly productive person, despite ADHD. In…

Or Why I Haven’t Published Much In Months *Yikes* My writing practice has been in and out for years. I’ve always longed to write but that desire has been saddled with long spells of absolutely no writing activity. I suppose this might be what some people call writers block. I…

And What The Hell To Do About It One of the annoying things about me (to other people it turns out) is that I seem never to notice when I have my hair blowing across my face. My youngest daughter hates it when it happens and if she is within…

And Why An Attack On Salman Rushdie Is An Attack On Every Writer I am old enough to remember the furore around the publication of Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses in 1988. It was shocking. That an author could be sentenced to death by someone in a far-off country…

And it’s not just because I am terrified of dying in a plane crash — Because I am, you know, terrified of flying. I’ve tried everything to fly better. Drugs, drink, hypnosis. I am here to tell you that, like the song by The Verve, The Drugs Don’t Work. In fact, the best thing was the hypnosis, but it’s an expensive intense process and the…

After falling off into unwanted flexitarianism… — Today I was working on the laptop. My partner had returned from work early. We had a quick chat. I interrupted the flow of the conversation to look at my watch. ‘I’ve got to eat lunch’ I said. He raised his eyebrow as Sean Connery used to in James Bond. ‘You need…

For the purposes of this article, pretend I am a deadly highwayman — Picture the scene. It’s 1700 and something. You are travelling in your carriage, one a bit like that picture above. You’ve made good progress. The town is far behind you now. The pair of smartly turned out horses are trotting along through woods. Suddenly, the carriage driver pulls up the…

Do you have a pacing problem too? Mine is that I go from one hundred miles an hour to a snail’s pace often all in the same day. — Earlier this week I thought I’d sit down to write something. I have a few places I publish to, other projects that are works in progress and sit in my folders. The article I had in mind was for Medium because I want to keep some consistency of publishing here. …