Last Tuesday there was a talk on BBC4 on the subject of Imposter Syndrome, perhaps Imposter Phenomenon, when a person is assailed by a self-doubt that the position one is holding, or the skill that one is representing as one’s own, does not compare on a par with others in that field; a fear that the Fraud Police will knock on your door and call you out.

As I motored across Somerset’s April countryside with the radio feeding my understanding with imposter scenarios I began to think of my trade as a writer. Many days, even a few weeks, had passed and I had written only modest and spasmodic amounts – witness the entries, or lack of entries, in this blog in April

The facts are that my main laptop expired and despite many attempts to bring it back to life it has lain inert on my desk while I have pondered what to do next. Why should this have an impact on my writing productivity? I have pads of paper, pens and pencils all waiting to be brought into use, I even have a pocket dictaphone, but it is seldom in my pocket. And I do have a second, a modest and unashamedly second hand, laptop device and that has kept me going with routine tasks, but it has not been the substitute I have needed.

A lot of my files were backed up on my remote hard drive, but my discipline has been lax and my latest work, the recently worked extended and revised files, were not on the remote device. So task number one was to rescue files from the defunct laptop’s hard drive. With that achieved through the agency of an expert in such matters, it was urgent to consider what to do next, what replacement device I required, or wished for, to get back in business. The conclusion I reached was to revert to a desktop computer for my business as a writer. It was soon ordered based on an ex-lease, ‘good as new’ machine due for delivery within the week.

So as the radio programme drew to its conclusion I was reaching the point where I had decided the Fraud Police would be knocking on my door very soon, if I didn’t get matters sorted, the PC set-up and the keyboard in action.

This is the first fruit, next I will get back into daily progression of my next novel ‘THE REGISTER OF JOE’S TREES’, it has been going well and must now surge ahead.