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.