I didn't write anything here yesterday because I was trying to capitalise on the sudden inspiration I had for writing the next Standing There Productions script.

I proved yet again for myself, in other words, that William Faulkner was right when he said, "The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with". So true, Willie, so true. See, last night, I was robbed. During the night someone broke into my house and changed yesterday's brilliant writing into turgid, repetitive, pointless tripe. It was such a mess when I got in here this morning. They totally trashed the place. I hate it when those guys break in. It's happened before. You feel so... violated.

Anyway, while I was looking up the Faulkner quote, which I had of course remembered incorrectly, I found the following quote: "I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write." - P. G. Wodehouse.

That depresses me, because it's kind of true. And it's kind of not. The idea of a writer as an obsessive is, I hope, an overly-romanticised "mad artist" stereotype. But there is some truth to the fact that sometimes, even if you're going to a very close friend's wedding or something... you look up at the time and you realise it's half an hour before you're supposed to be there and you're still in your pyjamas but you're seriously getting somewhere with this script - you've rediscovered what it should actually be about - and suddenly it really weighs on you that you have to go to this DUMB WEDDING of your DUMB FRIEND (who is among your favourite people in the world the rest of the time but who now symbolises a selfish and demanding distraction). You're furious. You're late. You throw down your pen and swear at the computer when it takes too long to shut down. You can't find your shoes. You wonder why shoes were even invented. What is the point of shoes? Cavemen didn't need them, and now we have footpaths and everything so why are people so silly? Why do I have to stop writing just so I can go to see a ceremony celebrating some weird social union of two people who live together anyway, with two high-heeled leather bits strapped to the soles of my feet? It's just so bizarre.

The world turns really nasty for that small interval between enjoying writing and being sociable. I always have fun when I get to these things, and more often than not I am late to or absent from things I regret not attending. But it's a battle between the part of me that wants a social life and adores the people in my life and the part of me that wants to be locked in a quiet room with an endless supply of tea and recycled paper and maybe ocassionally a newspaper.

By the way, in case you're trying to find significance that isn't there, the above is a hypothetical situation. I have been to three weddings, and none of them has engendered in me the response described above, which is why I used that example. So shut up please.

In other news, I'm up to part two of Crime and Punishment , which really is somewhat of a corker. Dostoevsky apparently wrote quickly and obsessively but perhaps not just in a fervour of creativity. He was a serious gambler, which adds another urgency when you're writing for money (I imagine).

In fact, I would like to nominate Dostoevsky as the perfect contestant to spice up a reality TV show like Big Brother. Most banal TV show in the world, present sexual assault aside, but if you put someone on it whose father was apparently killed by his own servants, whose membership of the socialist party resulted in him being sentenced to death but then they said "Ha! Tricked you!" after the "mock execution" and shipped him off to do hard labour for four years in Siberia... I bet Channel Ten would get better ratings. He had an affair with his dead friend's wife and then married her, everyone in his life died at once leaving him with their debts and he was addicted to gambling and kind of a bit loony and Russian and cold and depressed. Perfect!

Put him in the Big Brother House. Go on. Maybe him with that pope who turned out to be a woman. Oh. Just looked that up on the internet and apparently that's very possibly not true. Bummer. It worked so well in Caryl Churchill's Top Girls. And it would make for much better television than, you know, drunken fratboy sexual assault.