Being an organised person, I am often frustrated, as frequently my nicely ordered day falls into chaos around me – all down to pressure of the outside world.
The Street Orphans
What is this outside world – it’s a place where anything other than writing activity goes on. A place where unexpected pulls on my time exist. A place where I am the only person in the world who can do certain, time-consuming tasks.
Let me explain by citing yesterday as an example. I have a novel to add a few thousand words to, an edit to complete, prizes that have been won in my Facebook competitions, to wrap and send. Another prize draw to organise. A piece to write on my cancer survival. This piece that you are reading, to compose. Emails to answer. Social media to attend to and my web newsletter to create and send. Besides my guilt-load of ringing folk who must think I’ve left this earth as it is so long since they heard from me. But what do I end up doing?
Well, we have moved house in the last couple of weeks and so, driving licenses etc all need a change of address – simple eh?
No. Hair-pullingly-difficult. Made so by all the sites I need to access on the computer having an off day. From the local council to the DVLA, all decide they are not going to play ball. ‘we are sorry, we don’t recognise your details’ ‘We are sorry, but repairs and updates are underway.’ An hour’s task turns into a nightmare. Eventually, I give up and send hubby the old-fashioned route to the Post Office to pick up old-fashioned forms to fill in and post.
The answer to all this is to rise early. Five am, and I am up, out of bed, and in my office. This is the time when I am most creative. With a background of the dawn chorus, I can have a couple of thousand words in the bag before hubby awakes.
If this is to be an orderly day, I will then shower whilst my tummy grumbles to be fed, spurred on by the delicious smells of hubby cooking breakfast. Breakfast is a calming time of chatter but can be a danger zone of things that need to be done – by me! If I negotiate breakfast without adding to my to-do, I’m home and dry.
Returning to my office – an attic space that I love, I then tend to my list of priorities. With no disturbance, I can rattle through everything I should do, along the lines of afore-mentioned, as well as add more words to my work in progress – I like to achieve five thousand before lunch.
After that, it is hubby time. This can be gardening together, or sitting out if nice, or going for a drive or a walk, or best of all, visiting family.
Lovely. If only life didn’t get in the way of my perfect day, then I would have more than around the twenty a year that I currently get. Sigh.
Oh, I forgot to mention that hubby does everything around the house and is why I didn’t talk about feeding the washing machine, shopping and cooking dinner – which all gives me a new perspective – yes, I do have perfect days, made so by having the perfect hubby – even if there is a million and one things he cannot possibly do!
Mary Wood’s latest novel, The Street Orphans is published by Pan in paperback and available now from all bookshops on the high street and online.