So the guy in the State Library cafe pointed out that I hadn't put an "e" on the end of "carnivore" when I was doing the nine letter word in the newspaper this week.

The fact that I had come anywhere near getting the nine letter word was very exciting to me, and I had in fact been hoping that somebody would notice.

Which of course made me about ten times more embarrassed when he pointed out that there was a letter missing and it was, in fact, an eight letter word.

There is something metaphorical about this. At the moment I have a few huge tasks, no idea whether I'll finish them, and a propensity to forget the final detail that everyone notices I've forgotten.

Or something. I don't know. All I do know is that I keep wanting to tell the guy in the State Library cafe that I'm actually very good with words. Honestly. Or, should I say, honestl.

I've been sent an email this week by several people about a playwright competition. I get emails like it all through the year, because I sign up to lists and because people are nice and think it would be good if I entered. I don't think I'd win, even I could enter. But I can't enter.

Competitions mean something in the theatre world. If you win a competition, sometimes it's the only exposure you get. That, and reviews. But a surefire way of getting reviews is by winning a playwright award for "excellence in Australian writing" or for "innovation in theatre" for addressing "issues of concern to Australia" etc. It's all a bit nauseating, but that's how it works.

The prizes are apparently offered to playwrights out of an interest in promoting excellence in Australian writing and revealing interesting things about our national psyche.

Let me be the first to say: what a load of crap.

In order to enter a script in a competition, you have to have done the following with it:

nothing

So, if you have produced the play yourself (because you don't like the idea of your script sitting around in a bottom drawer until someone else discovers it), you're not allowed to enter a script competition.

If you have allowed somebody else to produce the script, whether for stage or radio or in fact reproducing it in any way, you're not allowed to enter a script competition.

If you have agreed to one day in the future possibly allow someone else to produce the play, you're not allowed to enter a competition.

If you have entered the play in another competition, you're not allowed to enter.

So basically, you have to write your play for the competition. You have to submit it months in advance and you have to wait. You aren't allowed to enter it in anything else and you aren't allowed to put it on at the local scout hall.

This is because playwright competitions and funding bodies want to fund interesting and clever Australian pieces that hold a mirror up to society.

Or not.

Maybe it's because they want exclusive rights to put the play on first. I dunno. Just a wild guess.

I've been talking to some writer friends of mine. People who actually do write things that "hold up a mirror to Australia's psyche" and I think they should be able to enter competitions. Under the current rules, Shakespeare would be barred. Yes, I did just compare my friends and myself to Shakespeare. It's one in the morning on a Saturday and I'm getting worked up. I apologise. It won't happen again.

Every person who writes or studies or thinks or reads has a favourite place where they are most productive. I have recently rediscovered mine: here. Quiet, light, friendly, inspiring, divided in subsections that don't distract you away from what you're doing. There's even a cafe next door with newspapers and sunlight and staff squinting at you through hangovers. It's so perfect. I completely adore it and I always have. I used to study there when I was in year twelve and then again during university, but I moped away when it was closed for renovations and I've only just made it back.

I'm sorry State Library. I have loved you all along.

You know, now, they give you free internet, a beanbag room with computer games and a gallery!

But the part I love the most is that I feel so overwhelmed by everybody else's studious determination that I suddenly feel as though I'm running out of time (which of course I am) and perhaps I should get on with things, like these other people are getting on with things, and like I have been known to get on with things in the past (cut to flashback of me in year twelve)... All of which means that I have done more work on my script in three days in the State Library than I probably had pre-harddrive-crash (or pre-crash for short).

Also, after the Library, because I worked so hard, I rewarded myself and saw two films: a documentary about the making of a Cuban film called I Am Cuba, and an actual Will Farrel film called Stranger Than Fiction.

See what you can achieve when you nerd up? GO LIBRARIES!

Last week, we had a read-through of our unfinished script, 'For We Are Young And Free'.

We asked three very clever people to play the parts in the script and to provide us with feedback afterwards.

I honestly cannot offer any better advice to writers than DO A READ-THROUGH WITH ARTICULATE PEOPLE BEFORE YOU FEEL THE SCRIPT IS READY.

It was the best, most challenging and motivating session. I don't know why, but the potential horror of realising that certain things don't work or that certain other things need to be completely reshaped is (at the right point in the process) the most confidence-inspiring thing. You realise you can change that, you can tweak this, you are in control of the direction of the writing and there are things about it that actually work. It's a brilliant thing, the read-through.

And then, months from now, after the show, in the foyer (at the wrong point in the process) when someone says, "I didn't like this character" or "Did you ever think about taking this part out altogether?" (and there are people who say this kind of stuff in foyers after shows), you get to say, "Yes, we workshopped that, and it didn't work because [explain why person asking question is not as clever as you are]."

And it's quite a nice feeling to be able to say something constructive, rather than standing there feeling insecure, and it doesn't matter if people don't like the show (not everyone likes every show)... but it does matter that you feel like you thought things through and you challenged yourself early enough in the process that it made an impact on the script.

It's at this point that you look across the foyer at the people who were at the read-through and you think "Thank you", and quite often they look back at you and they give you a little wink and you remember them always.

Thanks very much to Tim, Jane, Emily and Rita.

Me to the guy in the hard drive fixing place: Hello. What's the news on whether there's any data I can save from my entire last three years worth of writing?

Guy in the hard drive fixing place: Well. Er...

Me to GIHDFP: That doesn't sound good.

GIHDFP: It's without doubt the most damaged hard drive anyone in here has ever seen. I did a whip around. They all agree. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.

Me: Oh God.

GIHDFP: I can one hundred percent guarantee that you will never, ever be able to recover even a trace of data from it.

Me: Not even a little trace?

GIHDFP: When we turned it on, we heard a grinding noise. The heads on the hard drive were cutting into it.

Me: I hate computers.

GIHDFP: I'm so sorry.

I am re-writing the comedy festival show from memory.

I can't help but feel a little persecuted. Worst they've ever seen? Is someone telling me something? If they are, I wish they'd pipe down. A broken wrist and a broken hard drive are a slightly heavy-handed way of telling me to stop writing. Surely the carrot approach would work better than the stick. Offer me a highly paid job doing something else and I might stop writing. Break my arm and my hard drive and you'll just give me more material and get me really peeved.

You have been warned.

I am going to the Sydney Festival this weekend. There are some fairly exciting cultural forces to be reckoned with up there this weekend, including Standing There Captain of Industry Melanie Mars Bar Howlett and a chap who goes by the name of Beckett (seems to have written a couple of plays).

Speaking of culture, did anyone watch that brilliant, brief, dirty adaptation of Macbeth on the ABC the other night? Some of my favourite British performers and some presumably very happy production designers were let loose on a script that has traditionally bored me, despite its obvious brilliance. The whole thing was set in a kitchen, leading to a brilliant combination of Jaime Oliver undertones and ready access to sharp knives. Can't wait to see if their Taming of the Shrew is going to be as good as Ten Things I Hate About You.

(This leads me to an obvservation I have made many times to housemates and long suffering friends: don't you think that the easiest way to tell where a TV show was made is to mute the sound and look at the lighting? Bright or soft warm = America. Dark and shadowy or blue and alarming = Britain, anywhere close to Britain. Stark yellow or flat and white = Summer Bay. It's the Asian ones that are hard to pick. Try it.)

Anyway, the writing's going well thanks.

Shut up.

If you ever need inspiration for writing, the media during the Christmas season provideth.

Not only are there TV shows on during prime time that didn't quite work the first time they were aired (very good lessons, all of them) but the newspapers run stories like P-plater caught drunk with bathtub and Paris Hilton's Parents Enjoy Watching Her Sex Tape.

There are also people writing actually quite interesting things, although hardly any of these people are Australian, unfortunately. For instance, this, which is essentially a gossip column about Freud, and of course it is riddled with hilaaaarious freudian references and double meanings, but Freud is more interesting to me personally than a front page story about a country singer arriving at an airport (see here).

Also, anyone who has read Patrick Suskind's Perfume and is interested to hear it is being made into a film: read this.

I wish I could read more. In the meantime, I will read what little I can, watch bad TV, listen to good music, and wait for inspiration.

But inspiration, like everything else in my schedule at the moment, has a due date. The deadline for inspiration is the third of Jan. If I'm not writing on the third of Jan, I am firing myself.

It's official. I've been warned.