I’m writing this very early on my Monday. It will be Sunday in the rest of the world for a very long time yet.
Most of my Sunday was supposed to be spent meeting many deadlines. Instead, I and my body came to uneasy truce: if I didn’t do much work, it wouldn’t give me much pain. When I wake up, later this Monday, I have all that back work to catch up on. It struck me just now that I don’t talk about all the types of work I do. If I tell you Monday’s work, then I have to finish it all, right?
I am working on a developmental edit for someone. I’ve done all the thinking, and just have to write up and send the comments.
I have to go to the Copyright Agency website and do my annual update of publications. Also, for an entirely different purpose I need to start my list of workshops and talks given in the last year. I have a reading of one of my short stories to send to an organisations that makes them available to blind people (I’m losing my eyesight, so it makes me very happy to share my work this way) and someone else has asked for an excerpt from a novel.
I have to send (very belatedly) my Patreon newsletter. Then there’s an article to write, a table of contents to put into some sort of draft order for an editor to consider, and some of my old non-fiction is needed for an entirely new purpose. I have about 20 urgent emails to answer. Even with my bad day, I dealt with 18 urgent emails today. I am hoping there won’t be a rush of emails tomorrow and that all will be fine.
Add as many hours of dissertation to this as I can do (which depends both on what comments I receive and whether my eyes are up to close scrutiny), and that’s a fairly typical day’s work. What people never tell us as writers is the amount of administrative stuff that creeps into the day and makes life complicated when there is less energy than time. Add editing and copy-editing to the pile and everything can really add up.
If I get all this done by early evening, my reward is to meet up with a friend online, about 5 hours before this post goes live. In other words, if tomorrow behaves itself, everything you’ve just read about is in my past.
The wild wind that was keeping me awake and in pain has finally died down. Even the birds are silent. Also, it’s cool outside. I shall sleep and dream that, when I wake up again, I can do all the things I’ve planned.