Getting distracted again, notes on this sort of creative week

I do too many different things, that's a truth universally acknowledged in our household. You can call it not putting your eggs in one basket, or you can call it spreading yourself too thinly. You could call me a polymath or you could call me a Jack of all shit. (Quite nice that, must write it down to use later).

Anyone who's worked with me knows I have a tendency to get very excited about a brilliant new idea and pursue it to the neglect of something else I'm supposed to be getting on with. I can appear to have the attention span of a mayfly. With ADHD.

But give me a deadline and I'm a creative demon. If I have to get a strip written or drawn for publication then that deadline keeps me focussed until the job's sent off. And the feeling of completion I get from delivering a good job on time is pretty well unrivalled.

The Comic Art Masterclasses in schools give me a similar regime to work in. The kids have to finish their comic within a morning or afternoon, I then run it off on the copier and deliver the completed comics to them to take home. I'm happy, they're happy, it only takes a few fun-filled hours, and it pays twice as much per day as drawing for the Beano used to.

Comedy I find can be looser. Every gig is a deadline, but the preparation has to be done further in advance and right now, in the 8 week run up to my next Edinburgh show, it all still seems a bit nebulous and far away. But this week and last, and a bit of next, I have time in my office and creating to do. This should have been a Socks writing week.

Then what happened? Another thing came up. Can't tell you too much about it yet as it's under wraps, but in the next fortnight it'll be launched. It's a comedy thing I've been involved with before and had not had much to do with for three or four years. Then I talk to people, we all get excited about this thing, and lo it's Friday and I have spent most of the last 10 working days doing stuff for this thing. Today I set myself the agenda of knuckling down to Sock writing, but I've still got a head full of this 'thing', and I just know I'm going to be doing more on it today. And the irony is that this 'thing' is actually supposed to take none of my time and lots of someone else's.

Anyway, enough mystery. I've unburdened myself, to no great avail, and oh look I've wasted another chunk of time that could have been spent writing Socks. Must write Socks.

Later.