How to host a diner party and write a novel.

It's hard enough writing a novel, I think we've all got that bit. My books are usually about 120K words long and I am currently running a tiny like bit behind schedule. At the end of April I was right on schedule with 50K words written but then I realised that it wasn't going in the right direction, that I was actually writing a completely different book from the one I planned. So I stopped, I asked people what they thought, I pressed high light and delete a lot and my word count dropped by 30K word.

BUT it was a good thing because I'm now back on the right path and the happy path that makes writing fun and a pleasure to do instead of feeling as if you are wading through rather indifference treacle. Today however two things are stopping me from catching up.

One, it's a school inset day, which will be closely followed by ANOTHER half term. I love my daughter with all my heart but seriously do we need inset days WHAT ARE THEY FOR?

And secondly tonight I am having two friends to dinner, two lovely friends. But two culinary friends I feel that I really have to cook for instead of unwrap things from packages and put them on plates.

That take time and a bit bit of thought but it's not so bad, what's really bad is the cleaning. I'm going to have to clean now people who don't live here are coming round, and that means hoovering and wiping down surfaces, perhaps even polishing (do I have any polish?) And because cleaning is not TOP of my list of things to do and it in fact is not even on it, that means I have quite some back log to get through before eight pm tonight.

Which means that today less writing and more cleaning will be done, shortly followed by panicking over pannacotta and trying to entertain my five year old who is determined to do some craft with her mummy.

And as for half term next week? Watch this space.