They say when you write on a laptop you should look away from the screen at particular intervals.

I never do.

So guess what. Someone invented a computer program that tells you when to take breaks! It's great! You install the program, you write for a bit, and then the computer reminds you every now and then to take a short (fifteen second) break, looking away from the screen. It does this by stopping everything you're doing and displaying a picture of a zen-like yoga dude doing a meditation pose. Then what happens is that you get back into your writing and just as you've entered a deeper level of creative consciousness, up comes the image of the zen dude. So you stop what you were doing and look out the window. You think about something else. You get distracted. You remember what you were doing and you go back to your work. Enter new creative zone... zen guy... window gazing... distraction... back to work.

Then it does it for TEN MINUTES WHEN YOU HAVE A DEADLINE AND IT IS ONE IN THE MORNING AND I TELL YOU WHAT, my friends, there is nothing - NOTHING! - more smug than a zen like yoga dude meditating in the middle of an EXTREMELY focussed moment of concentration.

Then - as if mocking me further - zen dude maintains his inner calm as I swear and get annoyed and grow further from my zen ideal towards a mental, frenzied, uncontrollable writer with no discipline.

But anyway. It was a nice thought.