Writing is an odd job. I know I've said this a thousand times, but sometimes I look at myself and wonder, "Did you really think this through?"

The factor I didn't entirely think through is a factor known to science as "my entire personality".

I'm quite a social person. I love being around people. Talking, getting the giggles, even arguing with people is fun if everybody knows not to thump their fists on the table and scream "oh shut UP Darren you neofascist" and so forth. Being a writer involves extricating oneself from society. It means sitting alone and writing for long periods of time about people, none of whom you come into contact with, due to the fact that you're too busy writing about them to talk to any of them.

This is fine, I knew this would happen. I knew I would need the self-discipline to say, "Actually I can't do that fantastically interesting thing over there because I have to be utterly boring". It's like my old maths teacher Mr Raff used to say, "If you don't want to learn, that's fine by me". Because the person who's going to lose is always you.

As a result of this, I have become antisocial. This is in direct contravention of (see above) "my entire personality".

And even that's fine. I mean, it's awful, but it's a trade-off. I don't see my friends as much as I used to, but I've done the projects I set out to do and I've enjoyed them and I've quit my day-job and I'm feeling less like a caged bird than I used to when I was trying to juggle all these things at once and surely my friends understand, provided they remember who I am, and I love them, and they know that. 

What does bother me is what's happening now. Think of it, if you will, as a war. On one side there's my writing, and on the other side there's my personality. Sometimes my personality wants to kill my work because it causes my personality pain. Sometimes my work subdues my personality. Occasionally, they go into diplomatic talks and they organise a compromise whereby I can have a nice time with friends and also get some work done. 

What's happening now is: there's been a coup. My work is taking over. It's infiltrating my personality. Just like those diagrams of World War II with the pincer movements of troops across maps of Eastern Europe, my personality is under attack. 

Working by yourself is lonely. You don't talk to people in the office kitchen, or pick up the phone and call the department of whatsisface to talk to that lady with the scratchy voice about that invoice they should have sent. You don't have to deal with anybody at all if you don't want to. And in fact, it becomes more and more difficult the less you do it. As a result of this mental coup, I am becoming, I suspect, a true writer. I misjudge the moment at the dinner table and come off as obnoxious. I talk too loudly and too enthusiastically. I over-think. Afterwards, I wish I had said nothing at all.

 So if you know a writer, or someone who works freelance and gets to have coffee in the sun whenever they like and answers to nobody and refuses to get out of bed early unless there's a deadline: be nice to them. It's not always as fun as it looks. 

Sometimes, when it comes to writing deadlines, time disappears. Half an hour, two days, a month. This last time, I had a deadline during which one of my oldest friends gave birth to an actual human being. That really does tend to put things into perspective. 

Anyway.

Thing is, when you write a big bunch of stuff every day and your entire brain is consumed with this one, lonely idea you're working on, you know what? You don't write much else. You don't have much else to say. You don't, for instance, write an awful lot on your website. Or, you know, anything at all. But the two deadlines I've been working towards have now come to their crushing, painful conclusions and here I am, faced anew with fresh deadlines and a sense of hope. THIS TIME I'm going to be organised, clever, hilarious and the queen of the multitask.

I'll let you know how that goes for me.

Meanwhile, check out the next issue of the Big Issue. There's a slight possibility I am right up the back of it. Where all the cool kids hang out.

Things there should be words for:

- The act of laughing in memory of something, the exact nature of which you have forgotten. Recently, I walked down the street and started laughing to myself. I was remembering a moment in Sydney when Rita and I were bent double at 1am, laughing ourselves sick. What the hell were we laughing at? Neither of us can exactly remember although it is vaguely possible it involved a pirate. Point is, the memory of laughing is what amused me. Not the joke.

- We need a replacement word for moreish. As in, "these chips are moreish". We can do better than that surely. Who came up with the word serendipity? Or the word crash? Get those guys on board.

- The sensation of time passing quickly but also slowly. I have said this here before but the fact that it's almost the comedy festival is, frankly, ridiculous. I'm not even missing it yet. Conversely, December was clearly years ago. See? New word please.

This is my submission to the word police (love your work guys, big fan obviously). Suggestions welcome.

In other news, our friend Kaz is writing a book and she needs some help. Check this out:

It's about everything women think is important (or appalling) including confidence, body image and appearance, health, emotions, purpose, relationships, friends, family, nesting, work and money, getting older and shopping: the lot. It's going to be called Women's Stuff.

Please help to research Women's Stuff by going to the website kazbook.com and filling in the survey there.  The results will be used to research the book, and your quotes may be published (you can use a fake name).

So. If you're like me and you've always wondered "who are these people? 87% said what?" then get on board and do a little procrastinatorial work for the good of the nation. If you're a bloke and you're feeling left out, I recommend YouTube.

And yes, procrastinatorial is a late entry to the word police. What do think guys? Pretty good huh?

Dear writers who have writing to do,

Here are 20 easy steps towards getting started:

1. Get yourself some writing juice. Perhaps a cup of tea.

2. In order to write, you must know what you think. Read the paper.

3. Contemplate the nine letter word. You're a writer. Should take no time at all - and it's good for you!

4. I know, right? Me neither.

5. Refocus. Perhaps a cup of tea.

6. While the kettle boils, do one of your other tasks so as to save time. Unpack the dishwasher.

7. At this point, most good writers will become unnecessarily obsessed with cleaning the front of the dishwasher until they have broken out into a fine sweat and are squatting on the floor surrounded by outcrops of cleaning equipment, soaps, and, mysteriously, a spork.

8. Spork is a good word. Note that down.

9. Now. That tea we had on the boil. What of that?

10. Better check for inspiring news items. Hang on, who's in Paris with Jennifer Aniston?

11. What is that noise? Investigate.

12. Return from laundry having completed new load of washing, batch of ironing, and levelling of dryer so as to avoid any more annoying thumping sounds in Pristine Writing Environment.

13. Seriously though, you have to have your finger on the pulse. Check facebook.

14. Perhaps a coffee.

15. Girl in coffee shop = new best friend. Important to gain new and interesting perspectives on life for purposes of writing things completely unrelated to coffee girls, Jennifer Aniston, or Facebook statuses.

16. Investigate whether statuses has a more elegant plural. Discover, dismayingly, that statuses is in fact correct, rather than the much more obvious and literary stati. Consider working this idea into something. Consider what that something might be. Have another cup of tea.

17. Clean entire house. There. That feels better. Now we have a good working environment in which to write... what exactly?

18. Now... only when it is several hours before your deadline, mind racing, talking aloud to yourself, skipping meals and refusing to answer the telephone: start writing.

19. Feels good doesn't it. AND you have a clean dishwasher.

20. Adopt attitude of superiority and pride in reaching deadline with seconds to spare. Celebrate like giggling schoolgirl. Repeat.

Every now and then I gets to wondering: exactly what percentage of the world is made up of those of us purporting to be in "the arts"?

Purporting to be in the arts being the only prerequisite for being in the arts, I would suggest the percentage of artists (and bear in mind I can't count due to the fact that I'm in the arts) is a figure that would reach into the... manys.

This is simultaneously inspiring and a little humbling (bordering, if I'm honest, on depressing) when everyone you know and everyone they know is in pre-production, post-production, novelisation, and/or development.

But here's why I mention this: I detect interlopers.

At this point I would like to address those of you who have had steady jobs for the past five years. You know, jobs with suits and business cards and salary packages and after work drinks. Now, I know times are tough. I know that. I read the papers. I know some of you are losing your jobs. I know some of you have been given a nice package and told to come back later and it must be scary and some of you have kids and houses and the Beast That Dare Not Speak Its Name in the arts world: adult responsibilities, and that sucks for all of you.

Having said that, could I please beg of you: do not join the arts world. Please. I know it looks fun. I know it's swanning about with Moleskenes and coffees and looking frenzied just before deadlines. I know it doesn't involve staff meetings and that must appeal, I realise that, I've been to staff meetings myself.

However, know this: there are too many of us. Far too many. Someone pointed at a celebrant at the wedding I was at last week and told me she was a casting director, the woman next to her was an actor, the man next to her was a cartoonist, and the one in the striped suit was a director. The one in the striped suit, for future reference, is usually the director. But I digress.

I like my artist friends but I also like the other ones. The ones whose jobs I don't understand. The ones whose lives I peer into with wide eyed astonishment: you MAKE YOUR OWN PASTA? You went to WHERE on your holiday? You like Packed to the Rafters? I like those friends and their mysterious salmon-pink-shirted cufflinked high-heeled world. It's their world but I like to watch it and learn from it.

But there are enough of us. Look around you. Artists are everywhere. We serve you drinks, we thank you for calling and ask if you have any other banking needs, we read Russian novels on public transport. I know it's tempting to take that leap of faith to join us but please... I beg you... don't make me the majority. My marginalised nobody-understands don't-patronise-me attitude is the only thing I have.

Please don't take that away from me.

Happy New Year everybody.

You know, there are some people who write diaries. Not "STAFF MEETING AT 2PM" diaries but proper, descriptive diaries full of thoughts and ideas and observations that often prove to be witty and cutting and, to paraphrase our good friend Mr Wilde, excellent reading while traveling on the train.

I am not one of these people. My grandmother is one of these people. She was in the New Zealand army during World War II and she kept an immaculate, dramatic, hilarious page-turner of a diary which I have read several times from cover to cover in its original type-writer font with whited-out bits and corrections in black pen. One of my favourite English playwrights, Alan Bennett, writes hilarious diaries, some lines in which are so brilliant I have to read them several times to make the words aware of their impact on my brain. Words know these things, you see.

Anyway, the diary is an interesting form of writing, like the letter. Personal and performative but also somehow private and deprived of context. The reason I don't write a personal diary is because, frankly, I suck at it. All my diary entries when I was a kid started with "sorry I haven't written" (see, the words, they know) and attempted to fit the entire day's goings on into a couple of pages of scribble. It's a shame, really, that this is a form lost to me, but it's also easy. I don't do diaries. Just like I don't do poetry. Best to just put a line through these things sometimes.

This diary, the Standing There Productions Diary, is an exception, because it's cheating. It's actually a blog, if you must know. It's on the internet. There are stories I won't tell here, like the one about the friend of mine who... no, never mind... point is, it's a slightly different concept but you know what I still do?

I have diary guilt. When I don't write here, I am aware of my lack of commitment to reportage. I am conscious of my responsibilities in relation to... what? reporting on the world of emerging production companies in Melbourne? Telling people how hard it is to write without getting distracted by YouTube videos of animals falling asleep? Linking to videos of animals falling asleep so that others may benefiit from my tireless research in this area?

Well for whatever reason, here I am. 2009 and I'm starting anew. I even have new year's resolutions, none of which is remotely interesting but one of which involves working like a trojan (they worked mega hard) in the hopes of getting Standing There Productions producing something new and exciting and extremely lucrative across international markets with ancilliary marketing opportunities that do not in any way indicate that we have sold out or lack any of our original indie credibility, of which, naturally enough, we have oodles.

There is a trip to Sydney next week for Stew and myself, where we shall be meeting the very busy and important Rita Walsh and will also possibly be seeing a few Arts Festival shows with the money our grandmas gave us for Christmas. I wish I was being funny. Oh how I wish.

In other news, I have now seen: Frost/Nixon, Bolt 3D, Australia, and Slumdog Millionaire. I might share my thoughts on these in greater detail once I have actually done some writing, but here is a thumnail:

Frost/Nixon: makes you want to go home and see the original Frost/Nixon tapes.

Bolt 3D: makes you wonder if you're being filmed on Candid Camera wearing dumb glasses and looking like a prize douchebag. Also generates prepared lecture from Stew on 3D being the future of film, which is fascinating if a little baffling (the screen is silver? Something about an optimiser? You what?). Other than that, it's not the best plot in the world, but the characters and voices are good.

Slumdog Millionaire: makes you want to go to India. Highly recommend this one actually, if you like a feel-good huzzah.

Australia: makes you want to move to New Zealand.

That's it for today. Happy new year.

I haven't written here for a while. A few things have been going on, some great, some terrible, some merely mundane. Life, in other words.

The exciting news, from a Standing There perspective, is that Stew and I are going to fly up meet Rita in Sydney in January, which we've benn planning for a while but now we've found flights that work. Huzzah! I am currently trying to fit the following into what I imagine "flying up for a business meeting" should be like:

- Obviously will need to wear a high-powered suit, preferably with pinstripes

- Should get one of those entire-bathroom-in-a-toiletries-bag concertina things that go flip flop flop flop and suddenly you're standing in the ladies' bathroom at the airport with mirrors and makeup and hair brushes and a massage table and stuff.

- Should probably purchase spectacles in order to peer over them.

- Should practice drinking those cofffees in the tiny cups. What are they called again?

Obviously, given most of the meetings will be between myself, Rita and Stewart, this will not be fooling anybody. Still. Worth a try.