Should writers get a life?

Do writers need a life?

From the outside looking in it may not look as if we do. You will see us hunched over our computers for long stretches of time and then dashing off to physios and Pilates classes in between to fix up our tight shoulders and aching necks.

In a week like this when I’m on deadline, the book is pretty much front and centre of my life, but I think, in times like this, it's still important to squeeze in a few different activities... to have a break, fill the well, relax the weary brain cells… whatever…

Things I did yesterday when I wasn’t writing…

Updated all the Townsville Cinema Club events in my diary. (I LOVE art house movies.)

Explored Melton Hill (thirty minute walk)

Read huge chunks of Anne Gracie’s divine regency romance “The Perfect Stranger”. If you haven’t tried her books, give yourself a treat and run and find one.

Bought fresh fruit and vegetables and heliconias in the Cotters’ Market (next block to where I live). Heliconias are tropical flowers commonly called lobster claws and I arrange mine in a big pottery vase that my daughter made when she studied art at high school. I hadn’t eaten fresh radishes for ages and yesterday I bought some that were wonderfully crisp and sweet – turned my salad into something really special. Oh and I also bought some rainforest honey and homemade mango chutney.

Watched black shags fishing in the creek. My apartment overlooks a creek and these wonderful birds form teams in the water, in a V shape like a net, and then they all close in together to dive on schools of fish. You see them bobbing and diving at once and there are tiny flashes of silver everywhere as they come up with fish in their beaks.

Watched the final episode of Bleak House.