Email your queries to Diana (please include hometown details) at: diana@dianacambridge.co.uk or send them to: Helpline, Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications plc, 5th Floor, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds LS1 5JD. She will answer as many letters as she can on the page, but regrets that she cannot enter into individual correspondence. Publication of answers may take several months. Helpline cannot personally answer queries such as where to offer work, or comment on manuscripts, which you are asked not to send.
QI suffer from SAD, and my writing always takes a dive during the winter. I feel I just want to stay in bed. Yet once I get going – usually late in the day – it’s not so bad, and I always feel better in the evening. I don’t think mine is a medical condition, and certainly not one I’d see a GP for. Are there any remedies geared to writers? LESLEYANN KANE Devizes, Wiltshire
AI know several writers who become depressed in the winter – it’s really not uncommon. There are little things you can do when you get up – light candles, make good coffee, and have a light nutritious breakfast. But if it’s getting up that’s the problem, then getting up early – force yourself! – is far better than getting up late. I’ve heard writers say that having a neat office and kitchen every morning will up your morale, as will putting on some gentle, relaxing music. The problem with being a writer is that we don’t have to get up – there’s no office we must report into – so we have to create our own professional routine. If you can get up at the same time every day, your body clock will respond to that – just as it does if you go out to work.