Today I did two things:
- I continued to review what I’ve been doing over the summer. To do this, I used the calendar and worked out which days I had spent doing what. It is enlightening to see which days have been ‘eaten up’ by other things – these are things I’ve decided to have in my life. I’m not talking about sitting on the sofa eating crisps here. I also noticed how much time we spend on birthdays (it was my birthday last week) and special occasions. A realistic writing plan / time management plan will take account of these things and of other necessary interruptions.
- I continued to work on my ten questions per scene for my crime novel. This week, when there are no builders and the small boy is at school, the writing has really felt like work. In other words I’m grafting and there’s a bit of me that’s rebelling – after all I had fun on my writing adventure! But I also realise that it’s this aspect of the work that I sorely needed to do. I needed to allocate time and space to it, and now here I am.
Today, writing felt like work, and in a good way. When I was writing The Haven Home for Delinquent Girls, I had plenty of writing time (no small boy!) and yet I found myself going into coffee shops just to have someone to speak to. (Sad but true.) I think I was treating writing as if it were some kind of dream fulfillment, and then (of course) I felt disappointed. The review in the Independent by Emma Hagestadt that said the book was about loneliness was spot on! It took me a long time to realise that writing is a job, with set hours, and that I quite like making my coffee at home, thank you very much.