There are 26 letters in the English language, and we need every single one of them. Want proof? Choose a letter and write a blog post without using it. (Feeling really brave? Make it a vowel!)

No letter P – I wasn’t feeling that brave!

Recently I wrote a blog entry entitled ‘Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda‘. I wrote about my university assignment that I found myself saying again and again ‘I really must get on with it.’ I had to write 5000 words which detailed a case study that I had concluded in school. I delayed writing as I was majorly irked that I had to do it in the first instance. But I whinged and whined enough about that in my earlier column. The last thing you want to do after a long day at work is to hit the books and start working all over again. I had a severe case of writer’s block and, as usual, the worrying was worse than the actual job turned out to be.

5000 words is an incredibly large number when you’re faced with the familiar blank folio and, although my friends would say that I could waffle for England, when you’re writing at Masters level you can’t do that. You need to be clear, concise and share your research, reading, thoughts and beliefs with the reader. As you write, you find yourself reaching for the thesaurus just so that you don’t accumulate the same words over and over again, ‘I think/ I believe/ in my mind’ all get rather dull. As I write this the word count stands at 4271, not including references and added material at the end of the document. I’ve had to walk away for the moment. My brain hurts and I need to do something else so that I can go back to it with fresh eyes. I know that count will change when I go back to it as I’ll cut out a load of rubbish, but at least the end is in sight, if just out of reach for the moment.

Writing this entry has given my a good idea to use in my Literacy lesson on Friday, two birds, one stone! What great multitasking!

The deadline is the 21st, wish me luck!

Words I wanted to use but couldn’t: post, kept, procrastination, proverbial, project, completed, postgraduate, precise, opinion, keep, appendices, place and previous.