After my appalling self-discipline on Wednesday, I was determined to Do Better on Thursday. I didn’t have any housework to do, which gave me an extra hour, and after my dirty cuppa and a reading hour spent reading fiction, I spent half an hour of my housework hour reading a non-fiction book, namely the section on parking bum in seat and writing…
This meant I was at my desk for my writing hour early, and before I sat down, I made myself a cup of coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker, but I don’t mind it if it’s weak, milky and sweet. I’ve been looking for a trigger or a ritual to set me up for a good writing session, and I hoped a cup of aromatic coffee was worth testing.
I sat down at my desk, switched everything on, and I opened the short story master file on Scrivener. I had a drink of the coffee, flexed my fingers and my hands hovered over the keyboard…then I remembered that I hadn’t posted the day’s blog post the day before, so of course I had to go and do that before I could start anything new for the day.
Only I couldn’t find the blog post master file for 2026. I selected it from ‘most recent’, but I’d unplugged my portable hard drive the day before to plug my Kindle in, and clearly I’d been working off the temporary files on the portable drive and not the permanent files on the computer hard drive. So I wasted valuable minutes again plugging the drive in and finding the correct file, then making sure I’d saved it to the computer hard drive and was working on the right one.
I hadn’t even finished writing the post on Wednesday, and there it was, dangling in mid-air. So I quickly finished it, connected the desktop to the internet, selected the image, and posted it everywhere, using the graphic once again that Patreon gives me to share on Instagram.
Now I was ready to start my writing hour…although the hour itself was already halfway through. AND I’d finished the coffee. Did I go and make another one and try again, or did I just press on? I decided to press on, but just as I’d added a few details to the Scrivener file I wanted to remember for the story, the phone went. The security chap who was coming after 1pm to disconnect the burglar alarms ahead of our new windows next week was in the area and could he come over right now?
Of course I said yes, and I dashed around opening all the blinds, quickly tidying every room, and spraying air freshener everywhere just in case. And then I waited for him to arrive, which he did. He said hello to the puppy, who of course thought he was there to see him, and then cracked on with the job in hand. And while he did that, I started today’s blog post.
There’s a slot allocated to the blog posts at the end of every day. All I had to do was move everything along a bit. I could start the writing as soon as the engineer went…But by this time it was noon and time for my midday brunch.
SIGH!
Ah, well, perhaps the afternoon would go better…
The alarm engineer didn’t leave until 12:30pm, which I thought was fine as I could have a truncated brunch break of 30 minutes instead of an hour. When I have a proper desk, I often eat at my desk. But the pop-up desk isn’t big enough and so I eat at the table instead. I started reading while I ate, and completely lost track of time. This is a NetGalley book, so that bodes well for the review even if it doesn’t do my working day any good.
I had a look ahead to see how many more interruptions I had booked in. On Friday, today, our new bedroom furniture is arriving, ‘between 10am and 2pm’. On Monday, the internet is coming ‘mid- to late afternoon’. On Tuesday, we’re having new windows and a door fitted, I presume from about 8am or 8:30am. On Wednesday, the garden is being flattened and landscaped, from 8:30am each day, for four days until the following Monday. We have the rest of that week off, and then the decorator is coming…
Doesn’t give me a lot of time, does it? At some point we’ll be replacing and hanging new blackout blinds as the rubbish vertical blinds will no doubt come down when the windows come out. And we’ll have to have the alarm people back again too, to reconnect everything and possibly replace the window sensors with new ones that match the new window and door frames.
But oh, it will be so nice when it’s all done. Especially the garden. Watch it pee down with rain for three months solid as soon as the garden’s ready to put some furniture in!
I did a bit of faffing, played with the dog for a bit, did some doom-scrolling while I had a half-decent connection, updated the address on my driving licence, and before I knew it, it was 2:30pm! And I’d done nothing. Not a stroke of work. Nada! So I got up to do a reset, had a walk around, had my next meal, fetched a drink of water, and tried again…
But the fact another day was slipping away got the better of me. I stared at the short story document and doodled a bit, but decided to switch to the proofreading so I at least had something to show for the day. I had a good two-hour session and immediately felt better about myself.
Today, the poet is working from home. We’re expecting a delivery of bedroom furniture and will no doubt be putting that all together at the weekend, I’ll have a go at doing the writing first, before anything else. I’ll try again with the cup of coffee as a trigger. And, hopefully, I’ll make some bigger inroads in the proofreading.
Oh, and by the way, I remembered to finish this in the last few minutes of the working day and get it scheduled, so that’s something at least…
Have a great weekend!
This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.
