Ella Hickson's diary

Confession: my life is usually very dull. I wake up early, I eat my breakfast, I walk to the British Library, I work for around eight hours and I walk home. I get excited if the British Library café staff use my first name, or when there's a librarian vs reader argy-bargy concerning request-slip defacing. Right now, however, there is a tartan-clad friend, who has just treated me to innumerable courses at The River Café, trying to fit through my bed-room window. I shan't elaborate, but suffice to say, when I have a play running, life changes.

Precious Little Talent, a romcom/family drama set in New York, opened at the Trafalgar Studios a few weeks ago. The title is an indication of the fact I was prepared for a slamming from the press. My first show, Eight, had opened in the same space two years ago to much acclaim. I was young and unheard-of and there was a lot of buzz. Precious Little Talent was the tricky second album - there's something at stake now: was I going to be a one-trick pony?

It all kicked off with my flatmate treating me to a pre-opening-night beauty treat: Garra Rufa fish. I'll explain: you submerge your feet in a tank of tiny, hungry fish who nibble, tug and munch at your dead skin. It's very strange and very good, but I couldn't help feeling sorry for the little guys - it was no River Café.

Feet nibbled and scrubbed up, the terrifying opening night arrived... and went very well. The opening-night party was a hoot: champagne and cupcakes at 8 Northumberland, and a speech or two to let the team know I couldn't have hoped for a better production. I had written the play two years earlier, just out of uni, living in Edinburgh and confused and unsteady about where life was headed. Now here I was, two years later, in a plush club, banishing that one-trick pony to the knacker's yard. It was one of those strange moments of calm that lets you measure how far you've travelled.

Next stop New York. Having just opened a show in London about New York it seems only right to open a show in New York about London. The Old Vic runs a scheme called the TS Eliot UK/US Exchange. With its transatlantic outlook, encouraged by Captain Kevin of the Spacey ship, it whisks a gang of young creatives across the pond to work with young New Yorkers. There was a brief moment of panic when I thought I was going to have to flat-share with a young director who is a notorious ladies' man, but thank the Lord, an admin error was uncovered and my morality remains intact.

The transatlantic theme continued as next up was a weekend writers' retreat at Dunford House in Haslemere to workshop Rupert Goold's company Headlong's new project Decade, looking at the tenth anniversary of 9/11. After all the buzz and excitement of my opening night it was good to spend some quality time with writers just sitting, writing and talking in the middle of nowhere. I mean, obviously, insane, intense and thematically a little depressing, but essentially great. I discussed problems of press and gender with my new writer friends on countryside romps. Most of the attention around Precious Little Talent has been of the Young Female Playwright variety and I'm mulling over whether this is good or damaging as far as female writers being taken seriously. I'm consistently frustrated that gender is the point of focus, the 'look at all these girls' celebration of equality seems contradictory to me. I wonder whether in any other industry the boys are split from the girls so ferociously. There should, in my opinion, be more focus on the work and less on the writers. I realise there's a whiff of hypocrisy about stating such an opinion in a magazine. But as a friend said, 'The time to challenge what you think is wrong is once you're in a position where you talk and people listen.'

Back to London. I am casting next weekend for my third play, Hot Mess, about one mad summer night when two kooky twins unpick sexual politics. It's heading to the Latitude Festival in July and we are rehearsing it on a little island on the south coast, shacking up in caravans and rehearsing on the beach. It's going to be a brilliant mix of beers and sunsets - and lots of hard work, of course. Then there's more festival fun next weekend as a political short I wrote about David Cameron facing his first Prime Minister's Questions is headed to the HighTide Festival, and after that it's time to start on my next big play. I can't reveal much but suffice to say there have been discussions of cross-dressing with an aim to smuggling me on to an oil rig. It may all sound exciting, but today it's back to work. My bag packed and breakfast eaten, I'm off to the library.