On day three (Wednesday) the distractions reached a ridiculous level. The truncated version of the story is that water came pouring through our ceiling a few months ago, meaning that the company concerned needed to come back and make good. (The long version of the story is too laborious to recount.) So they turned up on Wednesday morning. The guy doing it spent a lot of the time on his phone chatting about what sounded like a blind date with someone who wanted him to get tattoos on his back. At one point he may have been to the toilet whilst still talking on his phone. It’s possible he was testing the flush, but I’m pretty sure he also sprayed the air-freshener. Our house is pretty small. It was very hard to concentrate. No, scratch that. It was IMPOSSIBLE to concentrate. I ended up going back to one of my self-published non-fiction books and looking into getting it made into a print book. It takes a different kind of brain-space to do that kind of research, and although I did still need to focus – I know about POD but I find it hard to retain all the information in my head – I managed to do a little bit while all that was going on.
Anyway: The fact that the first few days of working for myself have been filled with distractions has been a learning curve for me. Have you heard the modern take on the ‘Goddess of Discord’? I like this idea. It stops me freaking out. Instead I can just say ‘ah yes, Goddess of Discord’. This is my take on it. It’s when you have someone (or something) contrary or disruptive in the room during your event – or in this case in my house. It’s positive or productive because it will help you to think differently or do things differently. So here’s what I learnt: 1) there aren’t ANY days that are distraction-free. I don’t write in a garret (or what I call elsewhere the beautiful house / beautiful garden myth). 2) Sorting out my space and doing some project management are more important than launching straight into my novel 3) Launching straight into my novel will result in a lack of overview of the story as a whole. So thank you plumber-guy. I guess when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. And yes, the tattoos were impressive, but remember small houses are, well, small, and there was a writer listening.
On day four (Thursday) I knew I had to go out in the afternoon. I had my son’s school show, plus the last session of the hidden disability project I’ve been working on. I was also on school pick up. This involved dashing across town and back in a taxi. So I had the morning. I’ve known for ages that I had to sort out my writing space, plus I now have loads of stuff from work (including six boxes of books) that needs to go somewhere. So I bought some shelves and – aside from a bit more work with K.M. Weildand’s software – I dedicated Thursday morning to sorting them out. DIY isn’t my favourite thing, but these were flat-pack. How hard could it be? Once they were done it was time to go, so I carried on sorting books after my son was in bed. Actually, the shelves weren’t too hard to put up. Hoiking the books from the boxes, however, on a day so hot it felt like we were in an oven, that was hard. Took me all evening. I realised that I’m a closet hoarder and it really is time to let go some of these books. So, progress on novel – minimal. Progress on my writing space – pretty good.