9th January 25161 words so far.

Today I’ve managed 3,127 words, so I am now officially 500 words ahead of the cumulative target. I’d expected the day to go badly, not having had very much time to write at all, but somehow, when I have sat down, the words have flowed from my head onto the screen with little fuss or problem.

Given this is a complex scene, even though there are only two participants, it’s the pivotal scene in the entire book, so this has been very surprising.

I’ve had to stop now, I need to get ready for my talk tonight, and there are lots of things I need to pull together, not least the need to convert to working from handouts rather than using a projector (the Studio’s projection is, it seems, now unavailable). This has meant some construction changes to the structure of the talk, so I could probably claim a few hundred extra words on that.

Physiotherapy went well this morning. At least now I have a provisional diagnosis of my shoulder problem – a tendon being pinched in the rotator cuff, which makes sense given the agonising demonstration of exactly the movement I need to make to generate the most pain. Thankfully that movement is not a natural one so one I won’t be repeating any time soon – either consciously or unconsciously.

The rest of my problem comes from my posture; I tend to slouch so I need to sit more upright, which means removing the arms from my office chair and scooting the chair right under the desk and engaging the lumbar support. As I’m typing this I’m perched upright on the front of the chair, but my back is unsupported and that won’t do. I have an exercise to perform as well, to rotate my shoulder blades toward each other and then down, while sitting or standing upright. It’s actually very hard and I have to suppress a giggle – it feels very much like the rhyme I used to hear at school from the direction of the girls – “I must, I must, I must improve my bust.” Thank you, but no thank you if you get my drift.

Tomorrow could well be a great writing day, getting me even further ahead. My fingers are itching, but life intervenes, once more.

STOP PRESS; Just got the old screwdriver set out and found I can't remove the arms form the chair - it's the arms that hold the back on. Time for a rethink, I guess.