So, I’ve been to the dentist this morning for a check-up and clean. No biggie, I hear you say, except that it’s been years (and by years, I mean years) and I’m terrified of dentists. It’s not a recent fear like driving on the highway is, but one I’ve had from some bad dentist experiences as a kid. As an aside, in my humble opinion, we can thank a whole generation of country dentists in the 70s for creating a whole generation of dentist phobic people…or is that just me? 

As well as the dentist – where I’ve miraculously got away with just a few fillings after a seven (or is it eight?) year absence (she seemed a tad disappointed) – I’ve also been to the GP for a check-up and blood tests. The last time I was at the GP was back in 2015 – for no reason than because I’ve felt healthy the whole time and haven’t seen the need to go. I suspect those results might not be quite so kind to me (hello, liver…). Then there was the mammogram – which (surprise surprise) I’m pretty disciplined about doing. 

I tend to do that – jam all the things I really don’t want to do into one little window so I can tick lots of boxes in a short timeframe and get it all over and done with. The idea is I then have the freedom to do the things that I want to do. Like write.

It’s the literary equivalent of eating what you don’t like on the plate first, I suppose, and finishing with the taste you enjoy the most (and yes, in the interests of full confessional, I still do that too…). 

The problem, though, is the same as with the plate theory. Just like you risk being full of the not so great stuff before you get to the good stuff, the risk I take in getting all the things I don’t want to do first is that I’ll be out of time before I get to the writing. 

It’s why sometimes when people visit my round-up posts over on and anyways saying things like ‘I have no idea how you get so much done,’ the answer is simple: I get it done because while I might not want to do a lot of what I fill my day with, I do want to write. The other boxes get ticked, so I can.

Anyways, all this practical adulting has eaten into the time I have away from the day job and, therefore, my writing time, but it’s had to be done.

Other than day jobbing and adulting and a trip to Sydney where (finally) got to see my family and where I went into the office for the first time since November 2019, I’ve also been doing another pass through on The Café on Beach Road – which may yet be a completely different title given that there’s not actually a Beach Rd on the lakefront in Queenstown. A small but probably important detail if I don’t want complaints.

After ditching and rewriting plenty of words it’s now gone off for structural editing.

That means I now have no excuse but to sit down and finally finish It’s In The Stars – the final instalment in my chick lit series.

I’m also watching plenty of Bargain Hunt and Antiques Roadshow as research for a completely new project I’ll be starting in August – which I’ll tell you about next time.

Jo…