A few posts back I did a piece about the Guardian and the feature they did about how various authors spend their days writing. Ever since, I’ve been thinking about how I spend my time writing, what an average day is like for me.
Since starting NaNoWriMo I have been constantly writing. This is something that’s never happened for me before. I can feel myself getting into some sort of routine…
Anyways I thought it would be fun to act like a proper author and give you the lowdown of my day when I’m writing…who knows maybe when I’m big and famous I can look back on this and see how things have changed (Or not.)
An average day…
I get up around 8:00am where I’m either greeted to barking or a wagging tail and lots of licks from my puppy Poppy. I stick my laptop on and whilst it’s loading I either get cuddles or stay as far from Poppy’s jaw as I can, depending on if she’s happy puppy or psycho dog.
I feed my two cats Fred and Crooga (their names honest) who have started to stalk me for food, I try to convince myself that I’m neither Noah from Noah’s Ark or Dr Dolittle and that I asked for so many animals. For the next ten minutes I continue to move Poppy backwards and forwards to stop her eating the cat food.
At some point during the morning she has a nap and I have breakfast which consists of anything I can get my hands on. I am relieved of my mothering duties for a couple of hours. We all know cats can sleep all day so I’m sorted on that front.
I get straight into writing conjuring up plots and making up dialogue for characters that I’m really starting to get to grips with. I write a few hundred words and get distracted by Facebook/Twitter etc. I then write a few more hundred and the pattern continues until the dog wakes up.
She gets taken for a walk and fed, where I squeeze in some more writing time. I feel bad for looking on the internet so much and banish myself from doing it until I’ve written over a thousand words at least. This never happens and I continue to cyber surf and drag inspiration from parts of my brain I never knew existed.
I bribe the dog with treats and ice cubes (so goes wild for an ice cube) and squeeze in some more writing time.
I then spend some time removing her and her teeth from various pieces of furniture. After I have taken out most of the pieces of carpet from her mouth, you guessed it, more writing time.
Before I know it it’s nearly time for the mother to come in from work. I race around doing the dishes/washing etc and act like I did them as soon as I woke up when she comes in.
The animals get given over to her to look after and I either get ready for work or if I’m off, I look at my laptop screen amazed that I’ve managed to churn out a good few thousand words amongst the doggy chowder and catnip chaos of my day.
Of course this act of amazement lasts mere minutes, where I am back looking on the internet for something to cure my curiosity…
How do you spend your day writing?
A beautiful piece Jen!!! I smiled all the way through, I don’t currently have cats etc and the children have flown the nest but I recognise all the patterns, including the writing in between all the “good” reasons NOT to write. The details may vary but the story is the same, ah well, enough of this distraction, back to work! Try this link for a poetic view of these issues!!
http://wp.me/p1x8WB-5i
Thanks Kevin, glad you enjoyed it. Yeah I guess it’s pretty much the same for everyone, we are all fighting demons and trying to just concentrate long enough to string a sentence together.
Great poem by the way!