There's the stuff I have to write because I am compelled to write it. Because I can't and won't rest until I have written it. And yet, and yet, this -- the most psychically and spiritually essential work imaginable -- is the work I postpone, the work I resist. I know it will cost me a great deal of labour, pain even; it will be hard to get right; I may not be capable of getting it right; it may take me to the limits of my capabilities as a writer and find me wanting. So it grows inside me, like a... well, you know what like. One day, maybe, if I don't lose my wits or die in the meantime, I may be able to get it out. But I can't yet.

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All frighteningly calm on the work front today – I even managed to get through my outstanding emails before 10.30am came upon us. Well, gosh. Are people still in bed? Exhausted after half-term? It’s an enigma.

Unfortunately, it gives me time to puzzle over the possible suppliers for our proposed online booking system, which is even lower down in the “possible” stakes. Possibly. This is something of a bummer as I really have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing or which might be best. It’ll also mean having some kind of contact with the Procurement department, who are a mystery to me ...

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Anyone who frequents writers' online forums know that the way they work varies widely, from relaxed gossip, rigorous critiquing, swapping information, answering cries for help on 12th century journey times and 21st century divorce laws, celebrating success and supporting disappointments, to sophisticated arguments about voice, structure, narrative technique, characterisation or the possibilities of second-person narrative.

One member - let's call her Calliope - of a big site which encompasses all these elements, received a private mail from the resident nasty piece of work - let's call him Caliban - bemoaning the fact that the site was no longer sufficiently 'serious'...

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Spent a fair amount of time last night and this morning updating the various websites and blogs I use with the new Thorn in the Flesh cover (which you can see if you click through below to the full post). I must say that I'm rather pleased with the quote I've chosen to go underneath it on that page - it's one of my favourites from the book. Though it's not actually Kate who says it ...

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Ever seen 'Team America: World Police'? Well I feel just like Kim Jong Il (is that how you spell it?) did in the film. Isolated, alone, and ready to blow the hell out of anyone because of his 'ronriness'. What is truly sad, is that I have allowed myself to get like this since I moved jobs nine months ago. I got so distracted at work, that I forgot about why I was there in the first place - to help me write. Now I resent myself and my job for taking me away from what I want to do and am trying to leave as quickly as possible. I have no life to speak of because of my job, and despite having a wonderful girlfriend, I can't see her nor my friends as often as I like because I'm working funny hours. I feel stuck despite having written lots over the past three years. Rejections aplenty, but then everyone gets them so I shouldn't be moaning. Chin up and all that.

Anyway, I should stop ranting about how bad everything is.

Today's trauma has arrived early, so hey at least it's over. Every so often, the good people at the Times Literary Supplement send me a free copy in a brave but ultimately foolish attempt to get me to subscribe. Each time I open this unwanted gift, I can't help but groan. I mean call me an Essex book slapper if you must (hell, I like it), but honestly the TLS is so unutterably worthy and essentially dull that if you read as much as two sentences, you're likely to lose the ability to write altogether. And, dahlings, the font is so dreadful and there are just too many words all pressed together on one page, like the Black Hole of Calcutta. One cannot help but feel sorry for them all really. It's so exhausting ...

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The dream article is taking shape in my head. However, I am wondering if it will ever progress beyond there.

On Thursday I drove to Cambridge with Frank Tallis, who happens to be a clinical psychologist and an expert in Freud. He's also an exceptionally good crime writer.

We had a lunch appointment with a reading group based at Heffers, the number one bookshop in Cambridge. There was plenty of time to chat in the car.

I mentioned to Frank the almost incapacitating sense I have of feeling I need to do something to promote my books, whilst not being sure what exactly I should be doing. This has perhaps led me to coming up with ideas for articles, pitching them to the Guardian, occasionally posting them at the Rap Sheet, and of course feeding the plog.

Frank had a clinical term for the state I was in, which has been induced and studied in lab rats apparently.

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Finally Lord H and I managed to solve this week's "Torchwood" mission last night - but only by dint of Googling the answer, which made us groan when we saw it. Honestly we should have thought of that! I appreciate we may well now stand accused of cheating, m'dears, but if the TV Torchwood team can call up the great Martha Jones when they're stuck then I don't see why we can't ask the audience either, ha! The utterly strange thing is that the codeword we needed is the same as the codeword I use in Maloney's Law for a minor but essentially very key character. Weird indeed ... Lord H remains unsurprised that my head is full of aliens ...

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In response to Tim Lott's lament in The Guardian that heterosexual love stories are no longer considered a properly literary and sufficiently substantial subject for a novel, even though they power much (most?) of the great fiction of the past, Susan Hill argues that our ordinary love lives are too prosaic, that these days writing about great love can't be done in a world with easy and blame-free divorce, and that it has to include writing about sex, which is impossible to do well. As a result, she says, we cannot write the sweeping narratives, the high drama and heartbreak that great love stories demand. (I did post a comment on her blog, but it seems to have got lost in the ether).

I do agree that the lack of impediments to our modern western sex lives can make writing a 'big' modern love story very difficult.

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