Wendyl Nissen: Perfect novel back from lunch

I'm a great fan of hypnotism. Not the kind where you get up on stage and humiliate yourself by doing the chicken dance or pretending to be a dwarf. The kind where you trick your mind into doing something it doesn't want to do.

You lie down, drift off, listen to a voice and then miraculously a few days later bad Wendyl, the voice in my head which comes up with 1001 different reasons for not doing something, has come over all positive and motivational.

She's gone from whispering nasty things to my subconscious like, "You'll never get there and why should you? You weren't cut out for this", to, "The only difference between you and a published novelist is that they sat down and wrote a novel you silly billy - come on off to the laptop and let's get a few thousand words in by lunchtime!"

I know you're all sick of the novel. So are my husband, my children, friends, friends of friends, and any random person I happen to be talking to in Foodtown.

"It's very difficult," I'll intone. "It's all there, just needs some embellishment." And then I launch into the theory I have about being a journalist and therefore only able to tell stories with the minimum of words - a skeleton if you like. All because I was trained to make every sentence no longer than eight words, and every story no longer than eight paragraphs.

You may also well remember that this time last year I was in Venice on my own, apparently finishing the novel.

And I am painfully aware that every time I walk into a room there is muttering under the breath along the lines of, "God, don't let her come over here, she'll just go on about that bloody novel", or even worse, "She just likes pretending she's a novelist, she probably hasn't written a word."

I have actually. Many thousands of them - 79,846 of them to be precise. I've also designed a cover and come up with a name, much to my publisher's horror.

So it was off to see Dave, my hypnotist. He helped me finish the last book bad Wendyl didn't like and besides, I just like lying down in his green chair and having a rest.

Now all I have to do is listen to his recording once a day and my book will get finished. The only problem is that there are some other things not being finished as well. Namely, lunch.

"You're home early," announced my husband as I wandered into the house at 2pm from lunch.

"Am I?" I asked vaguely as I disappeared in the general direction of my laptop.

"And you're not drunk," he continued, following me down the hall.

"Aren't I? I suppose I'm not," I muttered as my fingers tapped furiously on the keyboard.

"Did you have an argument or something?" he inquired nervously.

"No, just needed to get some work done."

"You do realise this is the fifth time you've gone to lunch and come home early and sober," he said, before wandering off shaking his head in wonder.

And then the texts started.

"Are you okay?" they demanded. "You left before we finished the first bottle," they continued. "Was it something we said?"

It was more like something Dave said to bad Wendyl who refuses to come out to lunch with me any more and coax me into just another glass, another bottle and another dozen Bluff oysters.

"What a complete waste of time," she says, in her new, chirpy voice. "And let's not even think about all those calories."

I'm now preparing to lose my hard-earned reputation for the long lunch, as my friends will no doubt desert me for someone much more fun and entertaining of a midday meal. And I'm getting used to the fact that I seem to be living on nothing but lentils and endless cups of tea. At last, a true novelist.