Now that I’ve left school my days are a lot less structured and much more about getting certain things done. My problem is that I try to get a lot of them done at the same time. 

After Spur of the Moment I have a lot of meetings with people that saw the play. I’ve begged for most of them to be in the afternoon, so usually, at about lunchtime, I find myself catching the tube to Angel or Soho where everything seems
to happen.

Although they are necessary and usually really interesting, the meetings are frustrating as after a long journey, where I usually can’t find the right door, I spend about half an hour chatting to someone, then have to go all the way home. 

My new strategy is to couple a meeting with buying a whole new wardrobe, going to Starbucks about twice and calling everyone I know to see if anyone has time for a drink. This has become a very expensive strategy, though, and also my mind is always half on something else. I’ll see my friends while worrying about work and sit in a meeting, counting how many of my friends are still in London and haven’t left for uni. 

On days where there are no meetings or when I truly fail at finding anyone to distract me after one, I spend a lot of time at my computer writing. Once I have an idea, I’m usually very fast as long as I don’t manage to distract myself. Often these distractions, however, find their ways into a script. For example, in Spur of the Moment one character tells the other what their names mean because I had gone through a particularly bad stage of looking up name meanings on
the internet.

I’m always trying to educate myself, not in a very high-minded way, however. I’m a total
Wikipedia sucker. 

I constantly have several books and plays around the house (right now Mrs Dalloway and Wig Out by Tarrell Alvin McCraney). Whatever I am doing, I usually have a film or box set playing in the background (the amazing Mad Men at present) as I try and give myself an answer in all the meetings to ‘so what kind of film and TV are you into?’

Even though I enjoy them – though I’m not an addict like some people – I find it very hard to plough through a whole series and even when enjoying a book, I still have a pile of others waiting. So usually I am shamefully relieved when I notice something like The X Factor or The Apprentice is starting and then the computer goes off, the box set is ended and for the first time in the day something has my full and undivided attention. 

 Anya was recently nominated for The Charles Wintour Award For Most Promising Playwright, as sponsored by the Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2010. Her play Spur of the Moment was also nominated as Best New Play in the TMA 2010 Theatre Awards.  

Something for you…
Ink Pellet has five copies of Anya’s play to give away. Log on to the website at www.inkpellet.co.uk and follow the Join In link. Or you can buy copies of the play from Marston Book Services on tel: 01235 465 577 or email: direct.orders@marston.co.uk.  Also available from www.amazon.co.uk and all good bookshops. The play, published by Oberon Books, costs £8.99 (ISBN: 9781840029857)