It's taking a very long time to settle back into a routine after Christmas, and I am finding it hard to concentrate on any one thing, let alone the new book. I am beginning to think that I may have taken on rather too many new projects this year. I feel as if I have thrown a whole lot of balls into the air, and am now paralysed with indecision about how and when to catch them all, with the result that if I'm not careful, I'll end up catching none at all. That's what comes of being cocky and saying 'I'll do that . yes, I can do that . no problem . yes, I'll do that too . and that . and that'. I may be eating a lot of humble pie by the end of the year.

Still, it's early days. I have come up with a plot for my next book, and the synopsis is with my new editor at the moment. It ended up being rather different from the plot thrashed out on the moors that I talked about in December, but that's the way it goes. Depending on my editor's comments, it may change yet again. I'm not proud at this stage, and would rather take advice now than write a whole book and find out that it doesn't quite work. The plan was ("I'll do that") to write a rough draft before I went away at the beginning of February, but so far all I have done is to think "I really must go and get started". I have been preoccupied with buying and setting up a new desktop computer, which I must say is a thing of beauty, all black and chrome with a huge flat glass screen and a keyboard as yet unclogged by cat hairs or marked by telltale wine and coffee stains. It is a real pleasure to use, even if I don't understand how most of it works. It has just taken me two days to scan in a cover for Marriage Reunited which needed cropping.

I have also had broadband installed, and I am not sure if it is that or the new computer which makes everything so much quicker (pity it's not having the same effect on my writing). It's a real novelty not to spend my whole time dialling up and waiting hours for a connection, and it still feels vaguely naughty to have the internet on the whole time. The whole process of connecting to cable was a huge faff from beginning to end, and there were a couple of weeks when I really wished I had never started, but now that it's up and running, I have to say that I like it a lot. The only downside was that my phone number was changed, so instead of getting on with my draft, I keep remembering someone else who needs to know that I've got a new number. I am also rather taken up with my forthcoming trip to Sri Lanka. I will be away for two weeks in February, retracing my great-grandfather's footsteps from the letters he wrote while he was posted there in the 1870s, and another cocky plan ("yep, I'll do that too") is to write a book about him. I would like to say that I've been absorbed by in-depth research into nineteenth-century colonialism, but the reality is that I'm more concerned about finding a suitable bag to take on the plane and what I'm going to wear when I'm there. People think it's easy being superficial, but in fact it takes a lot of thought!

All in all, the chances of getting much done on the next book before I go next week are pretty slim. However, I am thinking about it, and as soon as I get home I really will have to concentrate on getting a first draft done by mid March. Now that have I have a functioning computer, there will be no excuse ...