A Day in the Life

I drink decaffeinated tea as I write, from a genuine ceramic teapot and from a bone china tea cup. It's a tiny luxury which costs nothing if you already have them, and tea is both soothing and centering.

    

        My mother always thought I should be an author. This always amused me because whatever I wrote as a child, whether it was a Christmas list, a schoolbook for one of my dolls, or a story for an actual class, was returned to me with careful corrections.  Her focus was my spelling and grammar and apparently not my self esteem !  I think my mother really should have been the writer.  But, I still remain on Earth, and in my overripe sort of way, I have some things to say also.  My mother was not pleased when I made the foray into college, first as a biology major, and then when I decided that becoming a physician and internship and residency would not be compatible with my plans to raise a family in my twenties, on to nursing.  My mother, a British gentlewoman saw nursing as something you did as a humbling experience, for example, if you were Tsarina Alexandra who trained during the war along with two of her daughters.  As bright as my mother was, she had little concept of what the modern profession of nursing entails.  My mother did not live to see me become an adjunct college instructor and I think this might have pleased her more.  How ironic that five years after her passing from Earth, I am undertaking what she thought I should do in the first place.
                    I don't think my mother really understood that writing is very laborious.  Even with a computer and a program you understand and almost like, it's lonely work.  I wake up around three am with some idea or such, and I feel compelled to write some of it down before I forget it.  I often begin to write at three and have the ideas fleshed out by five.  I play around writing until six and then everyone at my house begins to get up, they shower, get breakfast, and head out to universities, jobs, etc. which are far and wide.  After everyone leaves, I wait for the hot water heater to recover, and get a shower myself. Then I start my real day, which consists of taking care of animals, paying bills, cleaning something (admitted less than I should be cleaning), and lately a doctors or dentists visit. I also do homeschool one remaining son who insists upon calling me by my first name since his adoption a couple of years ago.      There are very few satisfying moments in writing. Most everything needs additional revision or refinement even when you think you are ready to send it out the door.
                      I don't know why one hundred percent of authors aren't morbidly obese.  I miss breakfast with the family.  I am often out at lunchtime and very hungry by then.  I have used sugared sodas to keep going, and snacking when writing is a bad habit.
                      Some afternoons I nap for an hour as I haven't had a great deal of sleep.  If I don't, I could be dozing when the family returns to base for a dinner which is closer to seven pm than five.  My husband is an incredible cook, where I am not.  I accept the way of the universe and let him cook while we converse in the evenings.
                      I can't say that I have ever experienced a "writer's block".  The trick I have to avoiding it is to have so many projects going at once that if you tire of one, you can switch to another until you can again see the original project as fresh and new.  This is how I had two books completed this year, and released within thirty days of one another.     Meanwhile, I must be frugal.  I have made no money thus far from either of these ventures, and although it is early in their release process, I have no idea how they are doing out there in the insane world.