I would say I have fallen at the first hurdle, but I haven’t even reached the first hurdle yet (unless you count the fact one of the people who has offered to read my manuscript has a son with the same name as the leading male, and, given that it is a romance novel, now I am resisting the impulse to ghost her for the rest of my life because oh god no).

I have stumbled in a pothole right after the whoever starts races said “go”, and the pothole is one I’m not entirely sure I want to talk about because it is my body. On Monday morning my body said no, and that was that. No to getting out of bed, no to walking to the bathroom, no to sitting in a position which might reasonably support laptop use. I have spent the time since then making poor decisions about how to use my energy and as a result the most productive activity I can cite from this week so far is renewing my travel insurance.

My body has functional neurological disorder. In very simplified terms, my brain has buggy software – it freezes, it crashes, it loads the program next to the one I wanted to open by accident, and god only knows where the hell it saves my files.

So this week, when I wanted to be ramping up and making progress, I have been planting pumpkins and fighting bats with a weaponised femur and silently cursing the 13-year-old who introduced me to Stardew Valley, and reminding myself that time spent resting is not wasted time.