This has been one of those days.\u00a0\u00a0 Not only was I interrupted, not only did I have other things than writing that had to be done today, but it was a gorgeous spring day and I didn’t get out for a walk at all.<\/p>\n
As a progress report it’s a dud:\u00a0 not one word on the book today so far.\u00a0 For anyone contemplating a career in fiction,\u00a0 you need to know these days happen.\u00a0 They’re frustrating to infuriating, especially when you aren’t goofing off on a gorgeous spring day photographing flowers, or fishing your favorite spot, or lounging in a hammock with someone handing you iced drinks and delicious snacks at intervals.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you aren’t getting work done, at least you should get to enjoy it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There’s more than one grindstone a writer’s nose loses skin to…or maybe it’s the other side of the main one.\u00a0\u00a0 The business side of writing takes time.\u00a0 Sometimes a lot of time….as in hours and hours.<\/p>\n
Today was lost to computer stuff (doing things left undone when we first hooked this machine up to the internet–but\u00a0 there’s still more to do, for it to completely replace the laptop, my former internet machine), dealing with contractual matters for university visits, making travel arrangements for one of those visits (involved going to multiple sites, comparing routes, flights, costs, etc.),\u00a0 attempting (unsuccessfully) to find out froma different city’s own mass transit sites how to get from point A to point B and what it would cost,\u00a0 answering agent and editor queries,\u00a0 reviewing other documents for an organization I’m part of,\u00a0 answering multiple phone calls, some of them urgent and requiring a thoughtful response and emails ditto and ditto.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There was the cow thing, for instance.\u00a0 Luckily it turned out not as serious as first thought, so I’m not having to spend the day helping reduce a cow to its edible components.<\/p>\n
I’m tired.\u00a0 I’m hungry.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m frustrated.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is normal for such days in the life of a writer, and such days do come.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you’ve managed your time well (a hollow laugh goes up from most writers at this point)\u00a0 you’ve planned in some wiggle room.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If I get any words written tonight, I’ll call them a bonus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This has been one of those days.\u00a0\u00a0 Not only was I interrupted, not only did I have other things than writing that had to be done today, but it was a gorgeous spring day and I didn’t get out for a walk at all. As a progress report it’s a dud:\u00a0 not one word on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,107],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}