I'm getting that indeterminate writer's urge, like building nausea, only pleasant. The sort of thing where you sit doodling on a piece of paper and then decide you really want to draw something: so you make tentative airstrokes over the paper, trying to decide where to land the pen, not at all sure what your drawing is going to be. Savoring it.

I've decided that if Anthony "Tony" Stewart Head can do American, he should play Rankin in the movie that is being made from my novel...in my head. My writerly ego is alive and well, thank you very much for asking.

Winter weather has come again: the wind chill is hovering around zero and that funny white stuff is falling, though not so heavily as at Christmas. Dad H. cleaned off my car before I came downstairs to leave for work, which he should not have done, but for which I was very grateful, as it saved me getting wet and cold in my work clothes.

The urge continues to gather in me, and as usual I begin to wonder why there is such a duality to everything we humans do. Faith exists only in the presence of doubt. Courage exists only in the presence of fear. Life shakes hands with death every day, and (as when it snows) the lines of demarcation are blurred: I drove over a curb on the way to work not knowing it was there under the white. I do my work, both afraid and fearless, both content and restless, both purposeful and aimless. I dream strange, unpleasant dreams, and while I am asleep Schrodinger's cat sits watching me and twitching its tail.

Enough doodling -- I am going to go and draw now.