Keri Beevis's Blog
January 7, 2018
A day in the life of this writer
Working full time I have to grab my writing opportunities when I can, be it a couple of hours in an evening or an afternoon at the weekend. Occasionally I will have a clear schedule; a solid six-hour period to throw myself at my novel. Nothing will disturb me, no one will interrupt me; I will churn out twenty pages of brilliance. Except it never quite works like that.
This is pretty much how it goes.
Fire up laptop. While it’s loading, time for a coffee.
While the kettle is boiling I notice weeds poking up in my garden, well… actually it’s more like a verge. Okay, it’s the area I step over between my front door and the bin. I pour my coffee and head outside. Lola, follows, because she is not really a cat, she is a sheep and she follows me everywhere.
She rolls on her back in an attempt to get me tickle her belly. I am a sucker for cat belly so I oblige. Her sister, Ellie, hears purring and realizes she is missing out. More belly rubs and another five minutes wasted.
I grab my coffee and head back to my laptop, which has switched itself off. I reboot, drink my now lukewarm coffee and check Facebook, Twitter and my email. Half an hour later I must crack on with writing.
I have just typed the first new sentence when the phone rings. It is Mama Beev.
Now I swear that Mama Beev has a magic telephone in her house that is programmed to ring whenever I am about to eat dinner, get in the shower or am working on my book. How else would she have a 100% record of interrupting me whenever I am doing one of these things?
Usually Mama Beev is distressed about something when she calls. This may involve a decision she has made and is now regretting. She does this a lot, from small stuff, like agreeing to play golf three days in a row, to big stuff. Only Mama Beev could spend years living in a house and dreaming of downsizing to bungalow, only to move to a bungalow and complain because she can no longer go upstairs.
If she’s not distressed about a bad decision, it will be about the rising price of toilet roll. Anyway, you get the picture; Mama Beev has phoned to have a moan.
Finally we’re done and it’s back to the book. I’m thirsty from the talking though, so put the kettle on. While it is boiling I notice my washing is done. I make the coffee, sort my laundry and nearly trip over Lola lying on the stairs while my arms are laden with clothes.
Lola shows me her belly. I cave to a cuddle and then make a fuss of Ellie, because Ellie is a very jealous cat and if she doesn’t get what she wants she might pee on my bed. (She hasn’t done it yet, but the threat is there).
Back to my laptop, I reboot, look at Facebook, Twitter and my email, lose another half an hour then return to the book. I write a sentence, sip my coffee. It’s cold, so off I go to make a fresh one.
This time I will focus. I won’t get distracted by cats, my mother or laundry. I will stay away from the Internet.
I type a few more lines before needing clarification of something. Being a writer, research is random. One minute I am looking up the year Google was launched (September 4th, 1998, for anyone interested), the next finding out how long a person could survive in a buried coffin. (One to two hours depending on how much you’re panicking and using up air).
So I do my research. Just check Facebook, Twitter and my email.
Hello, I’ve had a new message.
Finally I notice I have one-hour left of my six-hour time frame. This is not good. How have I managed to waste my day again? I sit down to write and suddenly, like the man who ate a bad curry and had the whole wide world fall out of his backside, my writing starts to flow.
I am typing faster than my brain can engage, my characters coming alive and doing their own thing. I overshoot my six-hour window, working into the evening, forgetting to stop for dinner, for a shower or for sleep.
Eventually I stop because I have a day job to go to the following morning, but I don’t want to.
I could write all night.
This is pretty much how it goes.
Fire up laptop. While it’s loading, time for a coffee.
While the kettle is boiling I notice weeds poking up in my garden, well… actually it’s more like a verge. Okay, it’s the area I step over between my front door and the bin. I pour my coffee and head outside. Lola, follows, because she is not really a cat, she is a sheep and she follows me everywhere.
She rolls on her back in an attempt to get me tickle her belly. I am a sucker for cat belly so I oblige. Her sister, Ellie, hears purring and realizes she is missing out. More belly rubs and another five minutes wasted.
I grab my coffee and head back to my laptop, which has switched itself off. I reboot, drink my now lukewarm coffee and check Facebook, Twitter and my email. Half an hour later I must crack on with writing.
I have just typed the first new sentence when the phone rings. It is Mama Beev.
Now I swear that Mama Beev has a magic telephone in her house that is programmed to ring whenever I am about to eat dinner, get in the shower or am working on my book. How else would she have a 100% record of interrupting me whenever I am doing one of these things?
Usually Mama Beev is distressed about something when she calls. This may involve a decision she has made and is now regretting. She does this a lot, from small stuff, like agreeing to play golf three days in a row, to big stuff. Only Mama Beev could spend years living in a house and dreaming of downsizing to bungalow, only to move to a bungalow and complain because she can no longer go upstairs.
If she’s not distressed about a bad decision, it will be about the rising price of toilet roll. Anyway, you get the picture; Mama Beev has phoned to have a moan.
Finally we’re done and it’s back to the book. I’m thirsty from the talking though, so put the kettle on. While it is boiling I notice my washing is done. I make the coffee, sort my laundry and nearly trip over Lola lying on the stairs while my arms are laden with clothes.
Lola shows me her belly. I cave to a cuddle and then make a fuss of Ellie, because Ellie is a very jealous cat and if she doesn’t get what she wants she might pee on my bed. (She hasn’t done it yet, but the threat is there).
Back to my laptop, I reboot, look at Facebook, Twitter and my email, lose another half an hour then return to the book. I write a sentence, sip my coffee. It’s cold, so off I go to make a fresh one.
This time I will focus. I won’t get distracted by cats, my mother or laundry. I will stay away from the Internet.
I type a few more lines before needing clarification of something. Being a writer, research is random. One minute I am looking up the year Google was launched (September 4th, 1998, for anyone interested), the next finding out how long a person could survive in a buried coffin. (One to two hours depending on how much you’re panicking and using up air).
So I do my research. Just check Facebook, Twitter and my email.
Hello, I’ve had a new message.
Finally I notice I have one-hour left of my six-hour time frame. This is not good. How have I managed to waste my day again? I sit down to write and suddenly, like the man who ate a bad curry and had the whole wide world fall out of his backside, my writing starts to flow.
I am typing faster than my brain can engage, my characters coming alive and doing their own thing. I overshoot my six-hour window, working into the evening, forgetting to stop for dinner, for a shower or for sleep.
Eventually I stop because I have a day job to go to the following morning, but I don’t want to.
I could write all night.
January 6, 2018
How is a writer supposed to look?
When it was announced I had won a contract to have my first novel published, a colleague at the day job informed me he wasn’t surprised, as I “looked” like a writer.
Now this colleague did work in our finance department and accountant types do tend to be a strange breed, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised to hear such nonsense, but then it got me thinking, how exactly is a writer supposed to look?
I did ask him to elaborate, but he was a bit vague, muttering something illegible under his breath in that way accountant types do.
Was it my clothing? I tend to mostly go for comfort when getting dressed. Maxi dresses, flip flop type sandals, pretty little cardigans… I can do glam, but walking in heels is an art and when I do it, I look a little like I’ve pooped myself, so I tend to reserve this kind of outfit for special occasions (generally ones which involve little movement). Was my casual hippy chick image one of a writer?
Perhaps it was my physical appearance. I am tallish, blonde (from a bottle), with brown eyes and a continually expanding chest. Seriously, I think my boobs are on a mission to take over the world. Was this it? Did all writers have big boobs? Was writing somehow synonymous with blonde hair? I thought of Stephen King. He was a successful author and yet he had neither.
By now I was truly flummoxed. I guessed it could be my expressions. Is there a special writer face? Given that I pretty much have three expressions; the deep in thought frown, which tends to scare most people away, even though I am usually thinking about something as inane as what I want for dinner, the dozy, far away, half smile, where yet again I am usually thinking about dinner, and the goofy over excited grin, which is an expression I am normally wearing when it is dinner, I discounted this idea.
Maybe it was in the way I move. I have two left feet, routinely trip over stuff that isn’t there and have the grace, co-ordination and rhythm of a drunken hippopotamus. No, it wasn’t in the way I moved.
So that pretty much left accessories. What accessories come to mind when people think of me?
Cats? I usually tend to be covered in a layer of their fluff even when they’re not present. Glass of red wine in one hand? Are these the trappings of a true writer?
Now this colleague did work in our finance department and accountant types do tend to be a strange breed, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised to hear such nonsense, but then it got me thinking, how exactly is a writer supposed to look?
I did ask him to elaborate, but he was a bit vague, muttering something illegible under his breath in that way accountant types do.
Was it my clothing? I tend to mostly go for comfort when getting dressed. Maxi dresses, flip flop type sandals, pretty little cardigans… I can do glam, but walking in heels is an art and when I do it, I look a little like I’ve pooped myself, so I tend to reserve this kind of outfit for special occasions (generally ones which involve little movement). Was my casual hippy chick image one of a writer?
Perhaps it was my physical appearance. I am tallish, blonde (from a bottle), with brown eyes and a continually expanding chest. Seriously, I think my boobs are on a mission to take over the world. Was this it? Did all writers have big boobs? Was writing somehow synonymous with blonde hair? I thought of Stephen King. He was a successful author and yet he had neither.
By now I was truly flummoxed. I guessed it could be my expressions. Is there a special writer face? Given that I pretty much have three expressions; the deep in thought frown, which tends to scare most people away, even though I am usually thinking about something as inane as what I want for dinner, the dozy, far away, half smile, where yet again I am usually thinking about dinner, and the goofy over excited grin, which is an expression I am normally wearing when it is dinner, I discounted this idea.
Maybe it was in the way I move. I have two left feet, routinely trip over stuff that isn’t there and have the grace, co-ordination and rhythm of a drunken hippopotamus. No, it wasn’t in the way I moved.
So that pretty much left accessories. What accessories come to mind when people think of me?
Cats? I usually tend to be covered in a layer of their fluff even when they’re not present. Glass of red wine in one hand? Are these the trappings of a true writer?
