Of all the sensations I experience semi-regularly, the one I'm least sure of is what you feel like awake at gone 4 and writing a review.

Part of me loves it. Debasement has always been my things, and pushing yourself to do something that isn't particularly sensible has a strange and addictive joy. Why do the work in a sensible time, when you can be the only person in Bath awake hammering out your take on the future, one word at a time.

Part of me hates it. I'm past the point where I'm able to actually work out whether a piece is working or not, or is even in functional English. Normally it's not a problem - I've made a career of writing extensively in the early morning and drunk out of my tiny mind (er... not that I'm drunk tonight), but I normally have time to look at something through less delirious eyes in the morning. This gig, I don't, since it has to be at the printers tomorrow. Hell - I probably won't even be awake when the magazine need it by.

The latter is a professionality thing, really. Writing at the last minute and doing what I'm doing is clearly an unprofessional thing. Generally. In videogame reviews, it can be a sign of a *professionality* thing, that you just had to play the game a little more, just to be a little more sure.

What's annoying in this case is that I've got the nagging feeling that my review would have been about as good and virtually astute if I'd written it after an hour.

I don't really mean that either.

Anyway, I write an e-mail to someone else where I name a price and vaguely hope they don't agree to it as then they'll be another sliver of my soul gone, and head to bed.

Talking about deadlines, it's Commercial Suicide Art one today.

Nice to know that I'm in good company.