As per my previous post, below, I have achieved another concrete thing today, as opposed to writing a few pages of something I am bound to delete at a later date, which is what the word "achievement" comes to represent in the world of writing.

I remember once getting the uncontrollable giggles in the audience of a Chekhov play because someone near me in the audience loudly predicted the next line would involve someone yearning for work. The person who predicted this did so in a broad Australian accent, loudly and at a moment of intense silence. I totally lost it. This was of course the great Chekhovian joke, that people in loungerooms sit around all day gossiping and desiring with heartfelt passion to contribute in some small way to society, but never actually contribute to anything apart from the monotony of their own dreary existence.

I don't know about society but I have definitely contributed to the upkeep of my motor vehicle. That is to say, a Mr Rick Thorn contributed to it and Stew and I "helped". As a result of this, I now have a shiny car. Check it out. If you concentrate, you can see Stew in the reflection:

Trouble is, after doing a cut and polish on the car, I have also cut and polish my hands, part of my face, and a section of pant. Oh well. At least I'm a hardcore DIY home improvement nut now. Right?

Writing is such an amorphous task. Even when you have a deadline and you meet it, you're never quite finished. Nothing else ever quite qualifies as anything other than procrastination. If you wash the dishes, you can accuse yourself of procrastinating. If you go to work: procrastinating. Hanging out with friends? You're only cheating yourself.

So every now and then, just for a moment, I find myself imagining doing something where an effort - physical rather than intellectual - yields a result. An old friend of mine is a cabinet maker - JEALOUS! Another friend knits actual clothing, as opposed to scarves that go nowhere because the incompetent person knitting the scarf doesn't actually remember how to cast off and then gets interested in watching series 3 of The Sopranos and discards the entire project only to find it, still attached to the knitting needles, when moving house years later.

Point is, for Christmas this year I got the Best Present Ever: a one hour pottery lesson. I've never been happier in my life. Look:  

I actually - rather than figuratively - got my hands dirty. And I produced something, too! Look:

Sure, slightly less useful than cabinet making but I get the feeling I'll be the proud owner of maybe a million bowls and oddly shaped vases if I give in to this mesmerising addiction. Still. It was fun to actually produce something. Next, I'm cleaning the car. Maybe. After another cup of tea.

Things there should be words for:

- The act of laughing in memory of something, the exact nature of which you have forgotten. Recently, I walked down the street and started laughing to myself. I was remembering a moment in Sydney when Rita and I were bent double at 1am, laughing ourselves sick. What the hell were we laughing at? Neither of us can exactly remember although it is vaguely possible it involved a pirate. Point is, the memory of laughing is what amused me. Not the joke.

- We need a replacement word for moreish. As in, "these chips are moreish". We can do better than that surely. Who came up with the word serendipity? Or the word crash? Get those guys on board.

- The sensation of time passing quickly but also slowly. I have said this here before but the fact that it's almost the comedy festival is, frankly, ridiculous. I'm not even missing it yet. Conversely, December was clearly years ago. See? New word please.

This is my submission to the word police (love your work guys, big fan obviously). Suggestions welcome.

In other news, our friend Kaz is writing a book and she needs some help. Check this out:

It's about everything women think is important (or appalling) including confidence, body image and appearance, health, emotions, purpose, relationships, friends, family, nesting, work and money, getting older and shopping: the lot. It's going to be called Women's Stuff.

Please help to research Women's Stuff by going to the website kazbook.com and filling in the survey there.  The results will be used to research the book, and your quotes may be published (you can use a fake name).

So. If you're like me and you've always wondered "who are these people? 87% said what?" then get on board and do a little procrastinatorial work for the good of the nation. If you're a bloke and you're feeling left out, I recommend YouTube.

And yes, procrastinatorial is a late entry to the word police. What do think guys? Pretty good huh?

Sometimes, as a writer, it's nice to deal with facts. Here are some facts:

1. From where I sit every Tuesday, I can usually see a cluster of blue hills called the Dandenongs. Today, I can barely see Richmond. There is smoke in this city and it ain't pretty.

2. There are 24 hours in a day. This is ridiculous and should be audited immediately.

3. The Carlton post office should be made the subject of a nature documentary, for I believe it contains information systems designed to keep the population down via a process whereby customers die of old age.

4. The smell of a giant box of pencils is lovely.

5. When I was little, a couple called Mr and Mrs Dixon lived over the road. They were terrifying. Their letterbox had Mr and Mrs Dixon written on it. They frowned and mowed the lawns and looked like they had marched to nineteen-eighties Greensborough straight from the fifties. One day, my friend Simone and I went over there to ask Mrs Dixon for some things to sell in our store. We had decided 30 seconds previously that we wanted to open a store in the street - people could give us things they no longer wanted, and we could sell them! Brill! Anyway, Mrs Dixon asked where the money would go to, and Simon said "to us", so Mrs Dixon thought very seriously for a moment before returning to her house. We were thrilled! The Dixons had nice things, our store would do well!

Mrs Dixon returned. She gave us a coat hanger. It was pink. I found it the other day when cleaning my house. Simone and I never did start that shop. Sometimes I wonder what happened to Simone.

Dear writers who have writing to do,

Here are 20 easy steps towards getting started:

1. Get yourself some writing juice. Perhaps a cup of tea.

2. In order to write, you must know what you think. Read the paper.

3. Contemplate the nine letter word. You're a writer. Should take no time at all - and it's good for you!

4. I know, right? Me neither.

5. Refocus. Perhaps a cup of tea.

6. While the kettle boils, do one of your other tasks so as to save time. Unpack the dishwasher.

7. At this point, most good writers will become unnecessarily obsessed with cleaning the front of the dishwasher until they have broken out into a fine sweat and are squatting on the floor surrounded by outcrops of cleaning equipment, soaps, and, mysteriously, a spork.

8. Spork is a good word. Note that down.

9. Now. That tea we had on the boil. What of that?

10. Better check for inspiring news items. Hang on, who's in Paris with Jennifer Aniston?

11. What is that noise? Investigate.

12. Return from laundry having completed new load of washing, batch of ironing, and levelling of dryer so as to avoid any more annoying thumping sounds in Pristine Writing Environment.

13. Seriously though, you have to have your finger on the pulse. Check facebook.

14. Perhaps a coffee.

15. Girl in coffee shop = new best friend. Important to gain new and interesting perspectives on life for purposes of writing things completely unrelated to coffee girls, Jennifer Aniston, or Facebook statuses.

16. Investigate whether statuses has a more elegant plural. Discover, dismayingly, that statuses is in fact correct, rather than the much more obvious and literary stati. Consider working this idea into something. Consider what that something might be. Have another cup of tea.

17. Clean entire house. There. That feels better. Now we have a good working environment in which to write... what exactly?

18. Now... only when it is several hours before your deadline, mind racing, talking aloud to yourself, skipping meals and refusing to answer the telephone: start writing.

19. Feels good doesn't it. AND you have a clean dishwasher.

20. Adopt attitude of superiority and pride in reaching deadline with seconds to spare. Celebrate like giggling schoolgirl. Repeat.

Every now and then I gets to wondering: exactly what percentage of the world is made up of those of us purporting to be in "the arts"?

Purporting to be in the arts being the only prerequisite for being in the arts, I would suggest the percentage of artists (and bear in mind I can't count due to the fact that I'm in the arts) is a figure that would reach into the... manys.

This is simultaneously inspiring and a little humbling (bordering, if I'm honest, on depressing) when everyone you know and everyone they know is in pre-production, post-production, novelisation, and/or development.

But here's why I mention this: I detect interlopers.

At this point I would like to address those of you who have had steady jobs for the past five years. You know, jobs with suits and business cards and salary packages and after work drinks. Now, I know times are tough. I know that. I read the papers. I know some of you are losing your jobs. I know some of you have been given a nice package and told to come back later and it must be scary and some of you have kids and houses and the Beast That Dare Not Speak Its Name in the arts world: adult responsibilities, and that sucks for all of you.

Having said that, could I please beg of you: do not join the arts world. Please. I know it looks fun. I know it's swanning about with Moleskenes and coffees and looking frenzied just before deadlines. I know it doesn't involve staff meetings and that must appeal, I realise that, I've been to staff meetings myself.

However, know this: there are too many of us. Far too many. Someone pointed at a celebrant at the wedding I was at last week and told me she was a casting director, the woman next to her was an actor, the man next to her was a cartoonist, and the one in the striped suit was a director. The one in the striped suit, for future reference, is usually the director. But I digress.

I like my artist friends but I also like the other ones. The ones whose jobs I don't understand. The ones whose lives I peer into with wide eyed astonishment: you MAKE YOUR OWN PASTA? You went to WHERE on your holiday? You like Packed to the Rafters? I like those friends and their mysterious salmon-pink-shirted cufflinked high-heeled world. It's their world but I like to watch it and learn from it.

But there are enough of us. Look around you. Artists are everywhere. We serve you drinks, we thank you for calling and ask if you have any other banking needs, we read Russian novels on public transport. I know it's tempting to take that leap of faith to join us but please... I beg you... don't make me the majority. My marginalised nobody-understands don't-patronise-me attitude is the only thing I have.

Please don't take that away from me.

Well, another year, another Oscars snub. Why Standing There Productions is not choking back tears and thanking the church in East Brunwsick for letting us use their urn I cannot understand.

Obviously the Academy just doesn't recognise quality.

Pfft.