No one ever told me to be more social (well, maybe my dad, once) or disapproved of my sitting around in the living room plugged into my walkman at every waking hour, my nose buried in a notepad – if it was mentioned at all it was because it was too loud and the concern was more for my hearing. 

I look back and realise that I missed a lot of what was going on around me and I’m surprised no one asked me to unplug and be part of the room. 

Fast forward twenty-two years and I’m stunned that there were ever that many free hours in a day. Those days, as they say, are definitely gone.  

Hour after hour I used to be able to churn out page after page of handwritten prose, probably in the region of 4-5000 words a day. I have manuscripts sitting in boxes to this day ranging from 98 A4 pages long (my very first attempt, May 1997) to 1000 pages (written during my GCSE year aged 15). 

I wrote that way until I headed to University where I upgraded to a laptop and wrote the very first version of what was to become the first novel I would later self-publish. 

(The antisocial side of me continued through University and I wrote two full-length novels in the three years – but only two, I tried). 

By the time full-time work was the reality, so too were adult relationships. I get on very well with my parents and suddenly plugging into a personal music player at every waking moment felt rude. Moving out of home didn’t help this much, in a post credit-crunch society I have often lived in house shares. Again, awkward. 

Make no mistake, everyone knows I’m a writer, well-meaning friends, flatmates and family often ask how the writing is going. But my friends these days aren’t teenagers, and they invite me to be social no matter how odd my sense of humour is or if I’m already in PJs for the night at 6pm. 

Add to that an unhealthy (I used to think this was healthy) dose of ‘I need a real job/career too because writing rarely pays’ and I’ve increasingly chosen real life over the imaginary friends I’d love to share with the rest of the world. 

The stress of trying to build a worth-while career at the expense of a creative outlet is something I’m sure we have all experienced at some point.  

Now, if you’re a writer like me, you’ll be tutting at me and shaking your head. One does not simply shut out the characters who ask for their story to be told. 

Yes, I have more ideas than I may ever have the time to write down in my lifetime. 

So what am I doing about it? Not a lot, so far, but I’m hoping to get better, hence this blog – and this too, is late. 

It's highly embarrassing to miss the first self-set deadline. All of the above has lead to a bad time-management habit. I’m also guilty of over-estimating my ability to bend technology to my will. 

Having been a Learning Designer for almost six years at this point and often at the mercy of authoring tools (if you know, you know), a little web-builder should have been the last of my woes. Get the text written, I thought, then plonking it in the site builder will be quick... Um, not quite. 

Having screamed at the web builder in frustration twice, I ran out of time to complete this post on Friday and here I sit late on a Sunday night, re-writing. 

With everything I’ve said in mind, I know a lot of writers carve out writing time, but I seem thoroughly incapable of this. The ideas will keep coming though, so I’ll keep trying.