A Day in the Life of . . .

Biography is a great love of mine and one kind of bio I especially enjoy reading is the occasional piece about a writer’s typical day of writing. From past readings of such, I’ve learned some writers, particularly male writers, spend a regimented three-hour segment of the morning to write, with the door to the room locked, or good as locked, and allowing no interruptions unless the house is on fire. In that short period of time, they may produce a whole chapter of a novel. This is only the first draft, of course, and people who write this way usually admit the first revision is where the hard work starts. The novel probably goes through several revisions before the author allows someone else to read it and make corrections in his flawed grammar and whatnot. After those corrections, he likely places the product in the hands of another writer—famous, if he knows one well enough—for real criticism. After that, he may work like a demon or give up entirely or somewhere in between these extremes, even placing the copy in a drawer somewhere at the risk of forgetting it. Perhaps it was the whatnot that got him.

On the other hand, many women do not have the leisure in their daily routines to set aside three hours every day for such activity. If they write after they retire from an office job, the household chores continue. There may be some chores that have waited for that retirement to get done. Retirement also holds a surprise: one’s mail increases, with ads from every insurance company, retirement home, fitness program in existence, it seems. This is when those lovely, big blue recyc carts come in handy. One’s pitching arm gets stronger. But if one opens these (to see if there’s a good side to this onslaught, maybe unused postage stamps, for example), this habit can take too much time. Better to close your eyes and pitch.

The point is, there is never time to write, unless you make it. You make time to go to a grandchild’s ballgame, friends’ anniversary celebration, weddings, funerals, vacation, grocery shopping. Don’t tell me these are different, that you have to do these, for a real writer knows he must write . . . or die. One book out there has the title, Write for Your Life. I haven’t read it, but I imagine it’s about this very problem.

On the other side of the coin is the retirement that allows the place and the freedom to write, when one lives alone—with books and paper all over the house, even to sit naked at one’s computer to write (I’ve heard of this)—and still the chores continue but no one is there to help with them. If a writer starts getting everything in order before she starts writing, she likely will not write. Not unless she has gotten everything in order the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, leaving not much for today to get in order. And it’s still 11:00 when she is ready to write but it’s time to fix lunch, for breakfast was at seven, and she knows she will get hungry and that will interfere with the writing, and . . .

What does one do? It depends, of course, on how deep the desire to write is, but if it is long-lived, and she finds no other pursuit so satisfying and fulfilling as writing, she needs to keep the television off, postpone chores, and write first. If it turns out she writes all day and the chores go till tomorrow, perhaps she could buy a stack of paper plates, bowls, and cups till she gets the novel through its first revision. Throwing dirty clothes into a washer isn’t a big job, and if she buys clothes that don’t need ironing, drying them is simple too. As for interruptions, she must be able to post her office hours and have people make appointments. If they don’t accept this procedure, it means they don’t think she is a writer or something like that.

♥