I just wrote my first fight scene, the climax to the screenplay I have been working on for these many months. I have been agonizing over it for a week (longer), and reading directions online: "How To Write a Fight". I haven't re-read it yet. The adrenalin is still pumping. I am still breathing hard.

I can't think about it tomorrow. I have to think about it this afternoon. I'm on a deadline.

I am not a violent person.

I have just been in Stratford for a couple of days. Among other things, I saw The Virgin Trial, the second play of a trilogy Canadian playwright Kate Hennig has written, is writing, about the last of the Tudors: The Last Wife, about Kate Parr, the last wife of Henry VII; Elizabeth, the daughter of Ann Boleyn, the Virgin Queen; and I don't know the name of the third play being written (completed?). My point here is that the play I saw this weekend had scenes of torture and I had trouble, real trouble with them.

I can't bear violence. How can I write It? How can I pretend to be a writer if I can't? How can I write strongly about strength? Moral , not physical. And make it convincing?

Writing doesn't get any easier. Neither does living.

Pretty soon I'm going to have more time to prepare and write my blog. In the meantime here are some more words. (You're saving me time.)

chiral |ˈkʌɪr(ə)l| adjective Chemistry asymmetric in such a way that the structure and its mirror image are not superimposable. DERIVATIVES chirality |-ˈralɪti| noun ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Greek kheir ‘hand’ + -al. (Hi-five?)

hypogonadism |ˌhʌɪpə(ʊ)ˈgəʊnadɪz(ə)m|noun [ mass noun ] Medicine reduction or absence of hormone secretion or other physiological activity of the gonads (testes or ovaries). DERIVATIVES hypogonadal adjective ,hypogonadic noun & adjective (Use this in a sentence?)

spicule |ˈspɪkjuːl|noun 1. technical: a minute sharp-pointed object or structure that is typically present in large numbers, such as a fine particle of ice.• Zoology each of the small needle-like or sharp-pointed structures of calcite or silica which make up the skeleton of a sponge. 2 . Astronomy: a short-lived, relatively small radial jet of gas in the chromosphere or lower corona of the adjective,speculate |-lət| adjective: speculation noun ORIGIN late 18th cent.: from modern Latin specula, speculum, diminutives of spica ‘ear of grain’. (I'm still reading Rebecca West)

tentacle |ˈtɛntək(ə)l|noun: a slender, flexible limb or appendage in an animal, especially around the mouth of an invertebrate, used for grasping or moving about, or bearing sense organs.• (in a plant) a tendril or a sensitive glandular hair.• something resembling a tentacle in shape or flexibility: trailing tentacles of vapour.• (usu. tentacles) an insidious spread of influence and control: the Party's tentacles reached into every nook and cranny of people's lives. DERIVATIVES tentacled adjective [ also in combination ] ,tentacular |-ˈtakjʊlə| adjective,tentaculate |-ˈtakjʊlət| adjective ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: anglicised from modern Latin tentacular, from Latin tentare, temptare ‘to feel, try’ (I like this one.)

gurn |gəːn| (also grin )verb [ no obj. ] 1. Brit. pull a grotesque face. 2. (usu. grin) chiefly Scottish & Irish; complain peevishly. DERIVATIVES gurner noun ORIGIN early 20th cent.: dialect variant of grin. (really useful!)

lacuna |ləˈkjuːnə |noun (pl. lacunae |. niː or lacunas)1 an unfilled space; a gap: the journal has filled a lacuna in Middle Eastern studies.• a missing portion in a book or manuscript. 2 .Anatomy: a cavity or depression, especially in bone. DERIVATIVES: lacunal adjective,lacunary adjective,lacunate adjective,lacunose adjective ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin, ‘pool’, from laces ‘lake’. (This is a good one and I've never used it.)

Shandean The online dictionary doesn't have this but I guess it's an adjective derived from the name of Tristam Shandy, the eponymous novel (1761-1767 - nine volumes!) ) by Laurence Sterne (1713-1768 ).

West (Rebecca) called something a Shandean tradition, I am not sure why, unless that Shandy takes his time got get around to informing his reader. He didn't say when he was born until the third volume. I have written a book, a combination travelogue, memoir and assessment of my ageing self, not yet published (sigh), and my original thought had been that I might write it like Sterne's A Sentimental Journey (Through France and Italy), but it got away from me.

I came across this exegesis in the online account of Sterne's book: "The novel defies conventional expectations of what a travel book might be. An apparently random collection of scattered experiences, it mingles affecting vignettes with episodes in a heartier, comic mode, but coherence of imagination is secured by the delicate insistence with which Sterne ponders how the impulses of sentimental and erotic feeling are psychologically interdependent." Yes, well, mine hasn't ended like that.