So the thing about writing is that you have to believe you're good at it. You have to believe that your particular take on this particular topic is interesting to other people. You have to imagine your audience, which means you have to imagine you have an audience.

In the months since our last show with an actual audience (hurrah! they DO exist!) it has been back to the drawing board (or, to be more precise, the yellowing laptop) and the imagining of an audience there is no proof of.

Sometimes, I just want something concrete to do. Something I tick on a list. Something I can give myself an A for. Sometimes I wish I was good at maths. Correct, says the red pen. Ten out of ten. Or even four out of ten. Even a fail. A bit of an objective marker, against which words and ideas can be rated out of ten.

Sometimes... and I know there are some of you who will be narrowing their eyes at me sternly when I say this... sometimes I wish I worked in the corporate world and received performance reviews. At least that way I could resent the powers that be for misjudging my dedication or for accusing me of lackluster sales figures or something...

But I AM the powers that be. Which is a terrible indictment on the process, just quietly.

I wonder if writers are more often than not control freaks. I am. I'm a control freak in the rest of my life. I have to drive the car. I have to read the program in the foyer before I see a theatre show. I have to win the Nintendo Wii tennis game, or else I will force the person I am playing into rematch after rematch until we've all missed dinner and I'm sweating and panting and saying "Just this one more time".

Even in the activities that I love that have nothing to do with writing or with winning, I find lack of control the most frustrating impediment - as if the world is conspiring against my perfecting of the perfect frisbee throw, my telling of the entertaining story, or my cycling home into the perfect sunset without getting a red light and having to waddle on my bike over to the pedestrian button and press it lots of times in order to convince the red light that there are lots of people waiting to cross.

This is a sad psychological state of affairs. Even sadder when you think about the fact that, as a control freak, this is one system you cannot reform. Because if we DID rate writing out of ten, and if there WAS a way we could determine the value of writing on a sliding scale, then we would be doing what so many people (erhem) find objectionable about literary prizes and arts grants - we would be pretending that subjective judgement is objective, or that popularity is success, or that it isn't...

Anyway. Isn't the winter sun lovely?

Sitting in it and drinking a coffee the size of a bluetongue lizard. Now that's something I can give myself ten out of ten for.

PS Check out these news stories and tell me there isn't something richly bizarre about humankind: Slapstick Driver Hits The Gas and this, which is proof that comedians will do anything for a laugh. As if we needed more proof of that.