1. Actually reading Ovid and/or Virgil, instead of quotehunting. I'm studying them because I adore them, but I keep getting sidetracked by the good bits.

2. Actually reading critical literature about Ovid and/or Virgil. I'm an awesome skim reader. I can get through academic papers pretty darn quickly and yank out the bits I need. But again, I keep getting sidetracked by non-essay related stuff in said texts.

3. Practicing the piano, while I have one. I've decided I'm really, really going to go for it this time and learn Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu. My view to playing the piano has always been "get stuck in and you can play anything". One of the first pieces I learnt to play, by which I mean heard and thought "I am going to play that", was that introduction from Firth of Fifth by Genesis. Here it is:



Although I tend to play it a little faster than that. My point is, I found the music and practiced like hell. It's still the most challenging thing I can play, a notch above everything else - and that's because I really put my mind to it. I mean, it's pure motor response - I couldn't teach it to you, tell you the notes or slow down when I play because it's literally just muscle memory, and if I stop concentrating I lose it completely. Yet it was a nice suprise to find I could do it through sheer willpower, and it's been my attitude ever since: just sit down, plunge in and play it. (I'm not a perfectionist, so my sight reading has become pretty formidable - and that's a double edged sword in itself, because if you can play something OK-ish without practice, and you're lazy like me, you never learn to play things to performable-in-public standard.)

There is one exception. Chopin's Fantasie Impromtu: listen if you want a special musical treat:



I can play the first ten notes, and the middle quiet section when it slows down a bit. But that gorgeous racing about at the start and end? Pfagh! No chance! It's a combination of all the hardest things - it's an irritating, complicated key + difficult rhythm in both hands made more difficult by playing them simultaneously + really, really, really fast. I've been bashing it for years and never got anywhere. Yet I'm sure my trademark method of plunging straight in can't fail me now. It didn't fail for the middle section, for example. What I need is a good week with the piano. Oooh, like right now.

4. Listen to the Manic Street Preachers. Friend 2 agonised about whether or not to go see their reunion concert next month for a long, long time. And then out of the blue, two days after saying she definitely couldn't go for all sorts of reasons, she phoned to say she'd just got tickets. Make no mistake, I am really really looking forward to it. But I need to brush on songs which aren't You Stole the Sun from my Heart before I go to get the most out of it.

5. Watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Guns of Navarone, Black Hawk Down, Brazil, Force 10 From Navarone, This Is England, My Beautiful Laundrette, Day Watch, Death Proof etc etc etc

6. Watch Doctor Who, The A-Team, Robin of Sherwood, Blake's 7, Doctor Who, Crystal Maze, Lost or even Galactica.

7. Write. I can't count the number of stories which deserved to be finished for enjoyment by others. Unfortunately, I work at too too obsessively slow a pace to ever get one done. Still, it'd mean a lot to me personally were they a little better shaped. Top of the priority list: Lord M's epic, as usual. Hard, as usual. The problem with writing the story of a splinter of your fractured psyche is that you experience it in three dimensions. Which is to say, a better author would leave out much of the detail, but I can't help it as it's a record as much as anything. And because of the semi-experience, it's very opinionated. And that's added to the trouble of writing a story which is really a life - much, I'm sure, isn't relevant.

I've done it straight. I've shaken up the chronology, and done it with flashbacks more than once, and from one or more points in the narrative. I've done it from the perspective of the "bad guy", I've done it from the perspective of a Horatio-style companion, I've done it from M's perspective and from a completely non-judgemental point in the sky. I've tried faux-Austen, but it just comes out sounding like Wilde. I've also gone all Dracula and attempted it through journals, articles and diaries. That one sort-of worked, but you lost a lot of that detail. I've given up on trying to make it a good story and plunged into a melodramatic, trash-romantic version - curiously, that one worked best as fiction, but was least satisfying for me. I've just embarked on a post-modern version which is even less likely to see the light of day than any of the above, as it's hopelessly pretentious and wallows in sub-existentialist musings. It's very personally satisfying, as it encompasses many of the odder thoughts I've had about reality's relationship to fiction, and some of the ideas I reach may eventually filter back into what I've been calling The Real Novel.

Which will never be published, except perhaps if I tidied it up for Mills and Boone. The basic story is way too hackneyed. But it'd please me were it finished, and I might have a single copy bound just to sit on my shelf. Second priority is my semi-semi-biographical school story. This is shamelessly postmodern, start to finish - think a steampunk Chalet School, as written by Lemony Snicket and Neil Gaiman - but I think it's in with a chance. It's complied from various shorter stories and ideas, and is certainly entertaining if completely trivial. It lacks any more substance than one weird happening after another. Whenever I love something, I write a story - most films and books I admire have a shameless rip off following a few months after. I recognise the source, but do it for my own amusement. One of the reasons I'm still so mad at my school is that it got a tribute epic, and then went and let me down on several counts after my big fictional demonstration of affection. I recognise, but can't help, that it's basically the fury of a scorned lover. So in one way it's catharsis - if I finish the story, the bad memories will be totally subsumed to the school I was actually at, the one with the undine in the swimming pool, the monkeys in the tree and something very nasty backstage.

Next on track is a fairly old story, basically the A-Team with teen girls. It feeds off my love of heist/crime movies, and trying to keep it from becoming too pitch black is a constant challenge. Despite the basically silly premise, it keeps bubbling back up in my thoughts which is an indication that maybe it's not so silly after all. I envisage it either as a comic book or TV series, which takes some of the pressure off.

And finally, my Castle epic which comes at the bottom because the idea of finishing it has been throbbing away since I was 11. There is a fairly large problem in that it was so innocently written. At the time it was only natural that most of my cast turned out to be princes and archmages in disguise. I think it's an unhappier world now I'm aware these things are "cliche", because my world doesn't work without them, and the sheer unlikeliness of all of these people accidentally coming together is a genuine plot point within the narrative. I'm not planning on retconning big things like that, or my story would vanish. One of the more taxing problems is compiling Emily II with the Emily I I was at the time, in particular coming to heroics. We have different standards. It's filled with daft heroics and dafter pride, chivalry, death, more death, and worst of all, honour. It's a valid literary pose to hold - I enjoy Beowulf and The Aeneid and Lord of the Rings. The problem is, it's hard to reconcile that with Emily II's love of irony and ugliness. I've been twisting scenarios for years now - heroes will flee, villains will stand firm, princes will fall in love with princes, and nice characters will die by accident and alone. If I read the Castle Epic as written by someone else, I'd nod approvingly and take it in my stride that X would think death before dishonour was a good idea, or that Y would dive into a perilous situation to rescue their truest love. The problem be, it feels very false coming from me because I personally don't believe it. Or rather, considering how far I fall under influence, I do believe it - but only when enjoying one of the above.

But as my own self I can't, and my cynicism has already permeated one or two drafts. My personal motto has been for several years now "decus intelligentia" - or, "honour with intelligence". Or to expand it, "Do what you must, as long as it is sensible". It occurred to me five minutes after finishing the movie Rob Roy, which I watched purely for the delectible Mr Roth and was not disappointed. The treatment of goodness and honour angered me though - once a man steals your cattle, harrasses your people, rapes your wife, burns your house and shoots your dog, you are no longer bound to face him in honourable, equal combat, because he clearly no longer deserves it. In the real world, however, it expresses a sense of pragmatism about all systems - defend your faith, but don't start wars; stand up for your friends, but not if they're 200 miles away and you're talking to their armed arch enemy, I'm sure they'll understand; know your beliefs, but be flexible; no martyrs. You'll appreciate why I find my youthful optimism hard to imitate.

I'm also aware the characterisation is very weak, and I don't want to come in and impose something like personality just to make it a better book. They're far more shapeless, archetypal than that.

8. Read. My room is stuffed with those books you meant to read when you picked them up, but never got around to. Within arms reach is The Bonfire of the Vanities (enjoyed the first 500 pages or so, then was bowed by the sheer daunting length of it), Death is Part of the Process (it was on the 1001 Book list. No idea what it's about. Oh my, it's about anti-apartite freedom fighters in South Africa. I must have been feeling worthy when I picked that! I adore the title though), To the Lighthouse, Orlando (in French, irritatingly, as I so want to read the rest of this), The Secret Agent, Vanity Fair, Bach Johnathan Livingston Seagull and Oscar and Lucinda. And that's without walking to my bookshelves which are doubtless even worse.

9. Set up manufacturing plant for baby Rorschachs. Yes, I am looking forward to finishing them. No, I've nowhere near enough time to make 4 of the things. As it stands, I have 4 heads, 5 arms and 2 pairs of legs.