Note:
This is the continuation of yesterday’s post, in which I began undead-blogging my attempt at creating a writer’s retreat at home.
If none of this makes any sense, you probably need to go back and read the previous post.
If you already know what it's all about then feel free to read on.
Tuesday
The plan for my first day looked something like this:
1: Get up and greet the day with joyful heart and gladsome eye
2: Dance or engage in some other form of healthy exercise, 3: Write,
4: Celebrate reaching my morning’s writing goal with a walk to coffee shop for ridiculous coffee,
5: Have lunch,
6: Write some more,
7: Feed my loving and patient cats,
8: Make dinner
9: Eat dinner and rest content with a knowledge of a good day’s work
The reality was a little more like this*
1: Wake up hating everything and everyone.
Discover that I still have a horrible cold with a high temperature, but said temperature is now a little lower than it was yesterday, and the COVID tests are still coming up negative so my family are free to banish themselves to realms unknown.
Bid them a fond farewell and go back to bed.
2: Shopping arrives an hour earlier than expected, which at least has the effect of making me get out of bed.
Do so.
In unpacking the shopping discover that the dishwasher needs filling because I’d been too ill to handle it yesterday.**
Furthermore, Tybalt (who is rich in years) has recently decided that his litter box is evil and wants to eat him.
This has certain unfortunate implications for the rest of the house.
Bodily drag him away from weeing on the DVD cabinet (yes, I know, but Netflix can’t suddenly decide to stop streaming my DVDS).
3: Decide this morning is officially A Bust
Make boring, unfrothy, syrupless, far cheaper coffee at home and stick it in the fridge.
Start writing a blog about The Plan versus The Reality (hello, yes, here it is!).
Promptly get excited about the thing I was meant to be writing, before I started writing this blog.
4: Lunch.
5: Start to write.
6: Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous felines who have no one else to bother with their nonsense today.
Realise that there may be a reason that writers’ retreats are commonly held away from home.
7: Write some more.
8: Stretch.
Make a cup of iced coffee and attempt to be smug about it.
Check word count.
How is it only four hundred words? Write some more.
9: Realise that the word I am looking for does not exist.***
Write some more.
Finish my coffee.
10: The word count is now in the thousands and somehow it is five o’clock.
Also, my head is throbbing as though someone has inserted a particularly loud grandfather clock directly into each ear, and my feet are numb because I am incapable of sitting in a chair properly.
Stop writing.
Make notes.
11: Save, quit, get up and dance until my feet feel like feet again and it is time to make dinner.****
Make said dinner, rejoicing in the fact that unlike my other plan for a writer’s retreat, this one does not involve punitive soup and I am thus permitted a reasonably exciting salad.
Manage to avoid death-by-tripping-over-cats.
Feed cats.
12: While eating dinner, start plotting flash fiction story that has nothing to do with the story I’m meant to be writing OR with my blog.
Oops.
13: Decide I am too wiped out to write more.
Check temperature.
Temperature is almost normal.
For someone who isn’t me, at least.
Celebrate my achievements with a large slice of chocolate cake that got left in the fridge by mistake.
(Because leaving it would be a waste, and if I eat it there will be more room for salad.
I’m health conscious like that.)
14: Read, catch up on a day’s worth of email and social media nonsense, and attempt to sleep.
Wonder if this really is the worst plan I’ve ever had. Suppose that I’ll have to find out on Wednesday
*Exactly like this, to be precise
**My family are, in fact, incredibly helpful people. It’s just that each of them thought that someone else was going to do it.
***Because people didn’t swear that way back then. Even though “then” is an entirely imaginary uncertain period of my own creation, positioned somewhere between “after” and “before”
****Do not do this if you are ill.
I am a *professional* nincompoop, and even I think it was a bad idea
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