GENREALITY

I don’t think I’ve talked about what my daily routine looks like.  Here it is:

8 or 8:30 am:  Wake up, walk the dog, eat breakfast.  (It takes me awhile to get myself up.  I used to set my alarm and try to get up earlier, but then I thought, Why?  My body knows when it’s time to get up, I don’t actually have to be anywhere, why fight it?)

9:00 am or so:  Fire up computer.  Check e-mail, reply to outstanding e-mails, post on blogs, check out all the news and gossip.  If I have any revisions or editing to do, I try to do that in the morning, too.  Balancing checkbook, paying bills, cleaning house, and doing laundry also happens here.

12 noon:  Walk the dog again — this is our long walk around the neighborhood, rather than just a turn around the yard.  Come home, eat lunch.  (I have to say, one of the really nice things about working at home is hot lunches.  When I had a job, I’d just stick a sandwhich or yogurt or something in my bag.  I love having hot soup, chili, pasta, leftovers, whatever, for lunch instead.  I feel so much better during the afternoon.)

1:30 or 2:00:  Sit back down at computer, or with a manuscript I’m revising, and write.  This is the word generation portion of the day.  I pretty much never get as much done as I think I ought to.  800-1200 words is average.

**Sometimes, I’ll go have lunch with a friend.  Working at home, I try to take advantage of chances for social interaction.  I try to combine those trips with errand running.  Those days, I might not get back to the computer until 3 or 4.

5:00 or 6:00:  I get thoroughly sick of whatever it is I’m doing, go watch the evening news, walk the dog again, and get ready for whatever’s happening in the evening — going out, watching a favorite show, reading, cooking, socializing, etc.  Sometimes, if I’m on a roll and the Muse is beating me around the head, I’ll write some more after dinner.

Midnight:  Take the dog out one last time and head to bed.

I have to admit, I feel much less productive writing-wise than I did when I was working.  I’m actually not writing all that much more.  I look at that 1000 words or so in those couple of hours, and think about how much more I could write if I did 2000 words in double the time, spent less time just screwing around (which is what it feels like I’m doing), erased Solitaire off my computer, disconnected the internet, etc.

But I’ve also decided not to beat myself up too much about that, because the truth is my part-time jobs were always kind of no-brainers, which meant I spent hours and hours turning over story ideas and plots and thinking about what I was going to write when I got home.  That brainstorming time still has to come from somewhere, whether it happens when I’m walking the dog or playing Solitaire.

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