ManicDDaily

It was a beautiful weekend in New York City.

This can be a real trial for a would-be writer, especially one with a day job, a family, and at least one hamper of dirty laundry.

Most writers do not like waste; they carefully save scraps of scribbled paper, notebooks, drafts.  Only a terrible mishap, or true epiphany (sometimes one leads to the other), induces most writer-types, artist types generally, to discard.

A beautiful day, a free day, a three-day weekend, is something you want to savor.   As a writer, you feel you are supposed to be experiencing the beauty of the world; as a person, you want to experience the beauty of the world; as a job holder, an office worker, you are desperate to be carefree, outdoors, enjoying a sunny sky.

One problem is that most would-be writers work on computers (they save their scribbles in notebooks, but they really would prefer to avoid having to re-type) ; and most computers really don’t function well under sunny skies.  Computers, even laptops, tend to be curmudgeonly homebodies; grinches who love grey; cloud-seekers.

But it’s your one free day!  But you want to work!  But it’s beautiful outside!

You feel guilty for staying indoors working; guilty for hanging outside not-really-working.  (I confess this guilt may plague me more than the average would-be writer–I was raised, after all, as a Lutheran.)

Some thoughts:   Try a notebook, even if you will have to re-type.

Or take your laptop into the shade.   Deeper Shade.

Try just walking and thinking for a while.

And then, finally, bite the bullet, and work indoors, hopefully by an open window.

Here’s the gist of it:  if you are a would-be writer; and have a day job, and a family, and dirty laundry, you really can’t live your life quite like other people–those lucky less-fragmented souls who can, for example, just lay out in the sun or play tennis much of the day.

If you want to do your work, you simply have to devote some of your free time to it, even when the day is beautiful.

You might, however, put off the laundry.

(PS – once again I take inspiration from my dog, Pearl, shown above, enjoying the outdoors but not fixated on it, knowing that she has to get home to do her one of her true jobs.)

PPS–the titles of two videos above don’t seem to be coming out–first –“Pearl Nonplussed by the Hudson”, second–“Pearl Doing One of Her True Jobs”.

This entry was posted on October 11, 2010 at 7:44 pm and is filed under dog, Uncategorized, writer's block. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: computer out in the sun, cute dog videos, daughter Christina, difficult choices as would=be writer, having to make choices as a would-be writer, manicddaily, ManicDDaily video, Pearl nonplussed by the Hudson, video of Pearl, writer's block, writer's block and beautiful weather, writing tips for prioritizing time