Handy stress-busting tip

Run around on an empty Portuguese beach with a toddler for a week. Works wonders.

Came back to face usual Christmas sensation, which is mostly frenzied irritation. No time! Too busy! Too many people! And still that awful and habitual decision to make - now I've left it too late to post any Christmas cards, is it okay for me not to bother? Again?

Meanwhile at the wordface another seam has been opened - I returned to several phone messages from the script editors of the prodco I met with just before we went away which gave me the strong impression I was being stalked. I thought we got on well, but not that well... Haven't found them lurking in the wash basket yet, but I'm sure it's the next step. Spookily, while writing down one of the ed's phone numbers with a view to returning her call, she called again. I could take this unnerving coincidence to be either further evidence of stalking - they've got a camera in the room! - or a Positive Omen. Think I'll go for the latter.

Upshot is I'll meet them and their Head of Drama early in the New Year to talk about doing a crime show (a thriller, not a whodunnit, so I can further stretch my genre muscles) later next year, and developing a new series idea. It's quite high concept, and if they'll let me go dark with it I'd be keen to take it on, not least because it's got a strong female lead and I'd love to create a mighty woman.

Question is, will I be able to do all the stuff I'd like to ? On Monday I went up the Filth to meet my powerful contact re. the Very Different development projects, and walked out with a commission for 2 treatments and a script. Next day I got an e-mail telling me that a series I was involved in developing, that's been on hold for more than a year, has now been green lit. Can I fit it all in while keeping quality up and myself sane?*

To help me decide, I spent a very pleasant couple of hours purchasing a shiny year planner and a delightful selection of non-permanent markers in a variety of colours, so that I can waste entire weeks of my life painstakingly highlighting delivery schedules that will bear no relationship with the stressful, compressed panic of reality. Whatever the schedule is at the start, it's a big ruddy lie. If you appear to have four months to reach production draft, you will spend 2 and half months of that time waiting and worrying, and 6 weeks screaming as you bleed over the keyboard.

Buoyed by the promise of future work, I dropped in on my agent with a bottle of malt and a faint sensation of what it might be like to be Santa. The agency have moved offices from a warren of hutches separated by piles of yellowing scripts and piss-stained carpet* two floors up to something resembling the control room of Little Nikita. The decor is stark, black and white Guantanamo chic, complete with blinding overhead interrogation lights directed at the guest's chair in all the agent's cells. Nice to know I have Blofeld working for me.

Back to work proper in January, so this lovely interlude of meetings, excitable chat, and brainstorming will come to an end and I'll have to get used to a low hum of anxiety again**. Ho bloody hum.

*A dog, apparently, but you never know. These agents can be right frightening sometimes.

**That low hum may be the reason for all the recent offers - the gnawing worry that "it's not good enough" is probably what drives me to churn out decent work. The only thing I'm not worried about is not being worried about that, because I'll always be worried about that.