Many people have an image of writers (and I've seen some sellers of various products use thia image in their marketing pitches) that looks something like this:
You lazily wake up without an alarm, mosey to the kitchen to prepare a cup of coffee, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and then spend the day blissfully transferring the stories living in your imagination to the computer, where (if you only had this marketing product), they sell millions of copies to adoring fans.
The End
Hahahahhahaha!
My mornings look more like this: wake before dawn (after hitting snooze a few times), stumble out of bed (to the delights of the cats because I'm FINALLY going to feed them), make coffee, stumble back upstairs, and sign onto the computer.
After posting a Bible verse, some good mornings on my social media pages, and birthday greetings, I then spend the next couple hours answering email and scheduling posts.
I then spend a couple hours working on my story budget while working out, as well as making phone calls (personal and work-related, and keeping up with email and social media.
The rest of the day is spent keeping up correspondence, keeping an eye on pages, writing and editing stories and news releases, editing pages, designing pages, and conducting interviews.
I am never finished and almost always push today's work into tomorrow...and into the weekend. I do not, as a strict rule, work on personal writing and editing projects during the week (no time), so all of that writing is kept for the weekend (or a vacation day).
The only day that MAY look like the aforementioned fantasy scene is Saturday, a truly magical time. For a few short hours, deadlines vanish. I've even had a few Saturdays where I've had NO "work" work to complete (rare), and I've spent an entire day working on a novel.
Here's what this past weekend looked like:
On Saturday, I actually did spend a few productive hours on the werewolf story before heading to New Lenox for a dentist appointment.
Afterwards, Timothy treated me to a cup of Gloria Jean's, which I enjoyed while addressing some BryonySeries related, non-writing chores with Rebekah, who was now home from work.
I scanned some photos for Monday's "An Extraordinary Life" photo list, took a break at sunset to get into the pool with Rebekah (the first time all year that happened), and then spent another couple hours scanning and processing photos.
On Sunday, I skipped church because I had to finish the "An Extraordinary Life" and design the page. Yes, I could have done it on Saturday, (or stayed up extremely late on Friday), but I felt this story needed a few hours of unbroken time and a fresh mind - so that's what I gave it.
I also ducked out to take a photo and, because I was in the area, to run over to Menards to look at fake fireplaces with Timothy and Rebekah (because they're considering buying one).
I then spent twenty minutes cleaning the house, and then two hours with Phyllis, a Joliet woman in her 90s. For the past year and a half, I've been working on her memoir. We are coming into the home stretch, and she actually cried when I read portions back to her.
After picking up my medicine at Walgreens, Timothy and I headed for Morris, where we spent a couple hours with Ron in the nursing home, a bittersweet experience.
Bitter because he's lost more weight, has pneumonia, and the dementia has firmly set in. "Sweet" because he was thrilled to see me. Enough that one nurse said she hadn't seen him look this happy in days.
Although he was extremely surprised I wasn't going to smoke with him and even more surprised that I had never smoked. Which left me wondering if he hadn't mistaken me for a former girlfriend in his younger years, which actually made ME grin. No matter, it made him happy for awhile.
Then it was back home for a quick dinner, a workout, and that was the weekend.
The point of this post is that a writer's life looks like anyone else's life: work and the rest of life.
Yes, there's those glorious moments of bliss in the craft, but many of those are planned, and the rest are elusive. Mostly, it's work, and you have to show up to do the work.
A writer writes, then rewrites, then cuts, edits, and (sometimes) goes online the next day to correct any typos that were missed in the process.
This is not counting the amount of time spent posting finding ways to connect readers with the stories, because many people don't read newspapers as keenly as they once did. This process is even more difficult with fiction.
Now, I'm glad I put that time into yesterday's An Extraordinary Life. I received some great feedback on it yesterday and not just from the man's loved ones.
But this, ultimately, is not where writers find most of their satisfaction. Because praise is fleeting.
Rather, the satisfaction comes from the hours spent in thinking about the structure and then hammering it out letter by letter, and then dismantling all that effort like a kid knocking down a stack of wooden blocks because it's not the castle he pictured, until finally you read something that makes feel good you wrote.
Or, at the very least, makes you relieved you made deadline and are able to go to the next project.
You lazily wake up without an alarm, mosey to the kitchen to prepare a cup of coffee, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and then spend the day blissfully transferring the stories living in your imagination to the computer, where (if you only had this marketing product), they sell millions of copies to adoring fans.
The End
Hahahahhahaha!
My mornings look more like this: wake before dawn (after hitting snooze a few times), stumble out of bed (to the delights of the cats because I'm FINALLY going to feed them), make coffee, stumble back upstairs, and sign onto the computer.
After posting a Bible verse, some good mornings on my social media pages, and birthday greetings, I then spend the next couple hours answering email and scheduling posts.
I then spend a couple hours working on my story budget while working out, as well as making phone calls (personal and work-related, and keeping up with email and social media.
The rest of the day is spent keeping up correspondence, keeping an eye on pages, writing and editing stories and news releases, editing pages, designing pages, and conducting interviews.
I am never finished and almost always push today's work into tomorrow...and into the weekend. I do not, as a strict rule, work on personal writing and editing projects during the week (no time), so all of that writing is kept for the weekend (or a vacation day).
The only day that MAY look like the aforementioned fantasy scene is Saturday, a truly magical time. For a few short hours, deadlines vanish. I've even had a few Saturdays where I've had NO "work" work to complete (rare), and I've spent an entire day working on a novel.
Here's what this past weekend looked like:
On Saturday, I actually did spend a few productive hours on the werewolf story before heading to New Lenox for a dentist appointment.
Afterwards, Timothy treated me to a cup of Gloria Jean's, which I enjoyed while addressing some BryonySeries related, non-writing chores with Rebekah, who was now home from work.
I scanned some photos for Monday's "An Extraordinary Life" photo list, took a break at sunset to get into the pool with Rebekah (the first time all year that happened), and then spent another couple hours scanning and processing photos.
On Sunday, I skipped church because I had to finish the "An Extraordinary Life" and design the page. Yes, I could have done it on Saturday, (or stayed up extremely late on Friday), but I felt this story needed a few hours of unbroken time and a fresh mind - so that's what I gave it.
I also ducked out to take a photo and, because I was in the area, to run over to Menards to look at fake fireplaces with Timothy and Rebekah (because they're considering buying one).
I then spent twenty minutes cleaning the house, and then two hours with Phyllis, a Joliet woman in her 90s. For the past year and a half, I've been working on her memoir. We are coming into the home stretch, and she actually cried when I read portions back to her.
After picking up my medicine at Walgreens, Timothy and I headed for Morris, where we spent a couple hours with Ron in the nursing home, a bittersweet experience.
Bitter because he's lost more weight, has pneumonia, and the dementia has firmly set in. "Sweet" because he was thrilled to see me. Enough that one nurse said she hadn't seen him look this happy in days.
Although he was extremely surprised I wasn't going to smoke with him and even more surprised that I had never smoked. Which left me wondering if he hadn't mistaken me for a former girlfriend in his younger years, which actually made ME grin. No matter, it made him happy for awhile.
Then it was back home for a quick dinner, a workout, and that was the weekend.
The point of this post is that a writer's life looks like anyone else's life: work and the rest of life.
Yes, there's those glorious moments of bliss in the craft, but many of those are planned, and the rest are elusive. Mostly, it's work, and you have to show up to do the work.
A writer writes, then rewrites, then cuts, edits, and (sometimes) goes online the next day to correct any typos that were missed in the process.
This is not counting the amount of time spent posting finding ways to connect readers with the stories, because many people don't read newspapers as keenly as they once did. This process is even more difficult with fiction.
Now, I'm glad I put that time into yesterday's An Extraordinary Life. I received some great feedback on it yesterday and not just from the man's loved ones.
But this, ultimately, is not where writers find most of their satisfaction. Because praise is fleeting.
Rather, the satisfaction comes from the hours spent in thinking about the structure and then hammering it out letter by letter, and then dismantling all that effort like a kid knocking down a stack of wooden blocks because it's not the castle he pictured, until finally you read something that makes feel good you wrote.
Or, at the very least, makes you relieved you made deadline and are able to go to the next project.
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