I have an amazing day job. I get to make up stories for a living. Frankly, it remains bizarre to me that I get to do this.
Emma Kavanagh
So, what does my day look like?
Unfortunately, it begins early. I have two small children (five and two), both of whom feel strongly that it would be a crime to sleep past six. Sigh. So, the first few hours of my day are getting everybody up, fed, dressed, doing the laundry, emptying the dishwasher, feeding the cat and the hamster, stopping the hamster from chasing the cat (seriously, it’s a thing!), and, please god, getting the children out of the door to creche or school.
If I’m extraordinarily lucky and work pressures allow, I will try and go straight from drop off to the swimming pool. There is nothing like a good swim to kick start my brain into action.
By 9.30am, I’m home and ready to start work.
I don’t have an office. I’d love an office, but my house contains too many people in too few rooms, so my office is an oversized chair in my living room. Or ‘Mummy’s work chair’ as it is commonly known. As soon as I get in, I settle down with my laptop and my inevitable stack of Pukka pads and begin writing. What that looks like will vary depending on the stage I’m at. I’m a planner, so some days will simply be me working through the plot in my head and figuring out how best to present the unfolding events to a reader. The scariest and most satisfying days are those in which I’m actually writing, letting words pour out on my MacBook. I always approach this with a sense of dread, and yet once I have begun time spins away, leaving me wonder just what has happened to the day.
I’ve been self employed for most of my adult life, and so discipline has never been a problem for me. I’m used to having to answer to my internal boss. Which is why I will only very occasionally drift onto Twitter or Facebook and then only if I’m having a break from writing. Other than that, it’s head down and write for as long as I have - generally until I have to pick my eldest up from school at 3pm.
I know a lot of authors who write in the evening too, but frankly, by the time everyone’s eaten and the children are in bed, my brain has started making a strange whistling sound and I’m no good for anything other than laying prostrate on the sofa and reading a book or watching something on TV.
Following on from all these thrills, I should also mention that I go to bed at 9.30pm. Just in case you weren’t fully getting to grips with how much of a party animal I am.
Emma Kavanagh. Author. Wild girl. Tired. So very, very tired.
