When I made my new years resolutions for 2012, one of the things I wrote was that I wanted to start spending my day as a writer. That is to say, I want to treat this like a real job, and not do things during the work day that a boss wouldn’t approve of. That includes spending hours on Facebook, but it also means not doing laundry or working on my baby’s photo album, or spending three hours on the line with the f**king people at Wage Works to try to get our health insurance to work.
Well, the health insurance people win, because we need what they’ve got and they only answer their phones during business hours, but other than that HUGE time suck, I’m getting pretty good at keep my writing days focused on writing.
Today is a great example. I spent the first three hours of my day working on the novel. Sweet sweetness.
Then I finished up some work for a client, revised a proposal for another client, finalized a contract for a big job and now I’m going to spend some time on the final bits of work that still needs to be done on the Northern California book.
A little art, a little paid work, a little lining up of paid work for the future and then some non-fiction writing. That is a pretty nice day of writing. It’s very encouraging.
In truth, my actual perfect day of writing goes like this:
Work on my novel (for which I have been paid a huge advance)
Break for lunch with a friend at a nearby cafe.
Read for an hour or so while sitting in my garden (which is bursting with veggies, even though I hardly ever pick up a shovel)
Work on the novel for a few more hours
Cook dinner for the family and play with the kids until I tuck them into bed.
Read until I fall asleep.
Ahhhh….
But until I’m a world famous novelist, I’ll settle for the day job of writing, writing, writing.
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