Photo by Pamela Weis – Nyxie takes over the work laptop
I started writing this post when it had been just over four weeks of doing my day job from home. That was in March. Obviously, I did not finish that post and now what I have to say has completely mutated into something else.
Working from home is great. The cats have certainly enjoyed my constant presence. Contrary to popular notions of cats wanting their humans to get the hell out, our cats spend much of our new quality time together goading me to play with them, sleeping on my desk (or work laptop), and crawling all over me while I attempt to work. Yeah, they like having me home. I know I am not alone in this, and I have mixed feelings about their attentions. I love our cats as if they were human children and relish the extra time with them, but sometimes I do wish our apartment had another room…with a door.
Photo by Pamela Weis – Shuri insists on being the center of attention
Amidst all of this upheaval, I have struggled to maintain a regular writing schedule. I actually have more time – about 45 minutes more each day. Yet somehow, I am writing less during my morning writing sessions. Not because I sit there and type less or because I am struggling to get the words out, but because I either sleep too late or spend more of that extra time on social media. It’s probably not healthy.
Nevertheless, I have written a fair amount of new stuff since March. I finished another novel (another first draft, that is). And I submitted a short story to a journal. This was a huge leap for me. I fully expect it to be rejected, but we all have to start putting our work out there at some point. I will keep doing that no matter how scary it is.
I’ve also been editing the first novel I finished. Editing is satisfying. It doesn’t provide the same creative outlet as writing something completely new, but it appeals to that part of my brain that likes digging into messy details and making them neat and tidy.
The funny thing about all this stay-at-home-ness is that I feel much less stressed and anxious. I am more content in general. I like being home. I like not seeing other people. Of course I miss friends and family and even my work colleagues, but it would take much longer than 3 1/2 months for me to miss them so much that I would go out of my way to make contact. And I am really hoping I can talk my boss into letting me work from home indefinitely. That doesn’t make me a bad person. It makes me an introvert. It also makes our cats very happy.
There are a couple of online writing communities to which I belong. I don’t know any of my fellow writers in person. I would not recognize their names or faces if I saw them outside the context of the online social group. A few of them are older than I am. One is in his 70s. Probably there are one or two in their 80s. This is comforting. I don’t think I’m too old to begin exploring a new creative pursuit, but if I were my 20-something self observing my present 40-something self, I might wonder – what the hell am I doing?
On the other hand, I always expected that I would get better with age; I would fit myself better, I suppose. I was a middle aged person in a young person’s body, strangely looking forward to gray hair and fine lines. I think most people who knew me when I was in my 20s would agree that I was always a little too responsible. Except for the rebellious cigarette smoking and that one tattoo, I was pretty straight and narrow in terms of life choices. I still am.
No, the time “issue” is not one of my age. It’s more about the time I have, or don’t have, in a given day, to spend writing. I wrote about 2000 words this morning in my novel. Ideally, I would do that (at least that) every day. As it is, I mostly manage to do it once or twice a week, usually on Saturday and/or Sunday. Very occasionally, I find some time on a week night. One day last month I took a personal day so that I could spend more than an hour writing. I think I spent about 3-4 hours writing and produced about 5000 words. That was amazing. It felt so good. I took my ancient PC netbook down to the lounge in our apartment building and parked myself in a semi-comfy chair, laptop on lap, for 1-2 hours at a stretch. It was cold because the air-conditioning was pumped, so I had a hoodie on. I doubt anyone took much notice of me. Writing on my lap is not ideal; the computer gets hot after awhile, and my neck sometimes gets sore; I prefer a desk. But it was better than being distracted in my apartment. This is one of the drawbacks to pursuing fiction writing at this point in my life. My husband and I live in a studio apartment. There is one large room, a small alcove for his office, a separate kitchen, and a bathroom. It’s small. And most of the time, that’s fine. But if I am to write fiction, I need silence and no distractions so my imagination can wander unrestrained by reality. That’s nearly impossible when my beloved, sweet, wonderful husband is awake. It’s not that he intentionally distracts me, or that he is bothersome in any way; it’s just hard for me to focus when he is up and about. I want to talk with him and hug him and interact. I need an office with a door that closes. But that won’t happen anytime soon, so the lounge downstairs is a decent substitute for now. And when there are people down there, I just put my ear plugs in. I don’t know them personally, so they are not as distracting as my husband. I am not interested in their conversations.
Time…carving it up in productive ways has constantly been a challenge for me, long before this writing pursuit came about. I keep trying to wake up early on weekdays to spend at least 20 minutes writing before work. I like writing in the mornings. The only downside is that our cats are hyper so they sometimes jump on my desk, and by extension, my keyboard. But that is tolerable because they’re cute and they make me laugh. The hardest part about morning writing is that I have a painfully difficult time getting out of bed in the mornings. That will probably never change.
As a personal challenge to my use of time, I am considering doing NaNoWriMo this year; it’s a little daunting. I would need to get most of my writing in on weekends. Weekdays would be extremely difficult. Maybe Thursdays I could get in a few hundred words, but mostly I’d need to be writing thousands of words on the weekends. Like 9000 words per weekend. That’s a little nuts. If I’m on a roll, I can write a little over 2000 words in an hour. I type pretty quickly and when the ideas are flowing, I just go with it. But still…
It feels like such a dumb problem to have. First world problem, for sure. Then I read about Toni Morrison and how she worked full time and raised two children on her own and still managed to find time to write early in the morning (at 4-freaking-am! according to Wikipedia) and I think, damn, I am so lame. I don’t even have kids. There must be a way to do this without making myself sick from sleep deprivation and totally abandoning all of the other things that keep me healthy and sane, like exercise.
Saying “no” to things will help. I will have to say “no” to more things than I usually do. And I’ll have to not feel bad about it. Time is not an infinite resource for an individual. If I want to finish the first draft of this damn book before, I don’t know, before the 2020 election, let’s say, then I need to get crackin’. NaNoWriMo might be just the thing I need to kickstart a new daily writing schedule.
