The I-Wish Version
of a Typical Morning: The day begins with a joyful bounce out of bed at dawn,
followed by a rousing bit of exercise. I peruse the morning paper while sipping
a cup of herbal tea and nibbling a croissant. I’m seated at my desk and tapping
literary brilliance on my laptop by 7 a.m.
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| Makin' this manuscript my bitch, yo. |
Reality: The
snooze alarm button no longer says “snooze” because the alarm has been struck
so often that the lettering has vanished. I roll out of bed when Moose, my cat,
fwomps directly onto my stomach in a desperate plea for breakfast before he
starves to death. (Note: Moose is nowhere near starving to death.) I can’t open
my eyes fully before at least two cups of coffee (yes to cream and sugar) and
breakfast – usually a bowl of nearly-healthy cereal (no milk) corrupted by a
thorough sugar coating.
Once I’m more or
less awake, I check my two email accounts, flag everything that requires a
reply, take a vague count of how much email is piling up, and move on to answering
questions and comments on Facebook and Twitter. If I have a blog post to write,
a book to review, a colleague’s manuscript to critique, a Q&A due, or bills
to pay, I do these first because I’ve convinced myself that my imagination will
trigger more easily and the words will flow better once my daily to-do list is
checked off.
Somewhere between
noon and 3:00 p.m., I open my story notes and WIP (work in progress). Often –
especially at the beginning and always in the middle of a novel – I force
myself sit and stare at a cursor blinking on a blank page for hours at a time
(with breaks for whatever’s in the pantry and an unreasonable amount of Diet Cokes).
Sometimes I type and delete repeatedly while wondering how I’m ever going to
finish an 80,000 word novel when I can’t manage to put a single sentence in my
hero’s mouth.
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| Oh crap. I can't remember how to write a book... |
When I’m lucky, though, I’m filled with ideas and able to dive right in. On a good day, I may write in half hour spurts throughout the rest of the day, or write until my fingers are numb, I’ve missed dinner, and it’s well past time for bed. Falling asleep while writing has been known to occur, making next-day pre-reads more interesting. (One writer friend, Laura Bradley Rede, confessed to falling asleep at the keyboard. The last thing she remembered doing before dragging herself off to bed was changing, That would come back to bite him in the ass to That would come back to haunt him. The next day, she found that she’d actually written, That would come back to haunt him in the ass.)
On the day I
finish the first solid draft of a novel, it’s like the end of hibernation must
feel for a bear. I emerge into a world that shifted when I wasn’t looking, and
now it seems unfamiliar to me, and I seem unfamiliar to it. My family and
friends are stunned to suddenly receive regular phone calls or lunch
invitations. My cats are baffled to receive regular meals. I have time to read
and socialize and shower consistently. Once the painful revision/editing phase
begins, and during the frenzied promotional phase (both include a good deal of hair pulling - my own - and literal gnashing of teeth), I may determine that I'm never, ever writing another thing again.
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| After hibernation... or before coffee. |
And then I wake up with a slightly muddled idea for a new story, and the whole cycle begins again.
Sorry, Moose.
