An emerging writer

It's winter, many of the paving slabs of Plymouth were iced over on my way to work this morning, but I'm getting a sense of emerging. These last few months have been a blizzard of work. Last Christmas I counted my sessions of 'creative' writing over the previous term. It came to nine. The count so far this term, save for periods editing stories, has been zero.
I asked Philip Hensher the other day how he pulls off quite as much as he does. His novels are thick and Booker short-listed, he's omnipresent with his reviewing work, he also teaches creative writing fulltime in Devon and has a similar regular London-plus commute to me. He joked that he had a rare condition which meant he never slept. And home in Devon means no broadband, no TV etc.
He also doesn't seem to have a website. So here I am, pattering away at the keyboard on my broadband connection at home. Mistake number one maybe.
A new novel is COMING though ... I'm working through the reading matter that has been collecting on my shelves for years now, building up a steam of research. Music is its theme. Saturday's research was watching how the young lead cellist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra held his body around his cello. The current book is Andrzej Panufnik's terrific autobiography. I wrote the early chapters in the final two weeks of the summer break, and haven't yet managed to re-read them. Soon, soon. It's coming.