Shifting Gears

There are some days that run full bore--and I feel like I am constantly shifting gears, especially when it comes to the writing.  And in case people wonder how much "writing business" a busy guy like me can accomplish in an average day, let me give you the run-down for Tuesday.  Not so typical . . . but not atypical, either.

5 a.m.  Rise and send emails (plus attachments) to one publisher and my agent (love sayin' that, but it's nothing really.  I'm serious, it's nothing.  Really!).

6:00-8:00 a.m.  Complete two book reviews and send these to an editor in Nashville, TN for a February publication deadline. (I love blowing deadlines away like this . . . I'm always early. Ask my wife!)

8:30-8:33 a.m.  Shower, shave, squeeze pimples, brush teeth, dress (repeat)

9:15 a.m.  Drive to office to do a real job

1 p.m.   Check emails and discover publisher received my email/attachment. Agent writes back to clarify questions about a book proposal.

1:30 p.m.  Agent writes back yet again to clarify my questions about the questions.  (I have a sudden urge to smoke a cigarette, but then realize I've never smoked and don't plan to.  I pop an Omega-3 Flax Seed oil pill--one of those big honkers shaped like a hockey puck and, subsequently, feel pretty darn good about myself.  I want to weep I feel so darn good.)

5:00 p.m.   Home by myself (wife will be working late . . . again). I consider writing my wife a romantic poem, but decide to write two others--both about the horrors of contracting intestinal worms.

5:30 p.m.  Chef-Boy-R-Dee was great! (Probably where worms come from.)  No church meetings, so I begin writing for the evening.  First, an essay for a preaching magazine; the second, an essay I intend to title, "Your Pastor, Your Friend . . . and If You're Married to Him, Your Lover".  

9:00 p.m.  Hoping my wife will be home soon so I can attempt romantic advances using some herbal tea and a few poetic lines I have whipped up comparing her eyes to "frisbees" and her lips to "those big wax candies we used to eat when we were kids and living on welfare."

10:00 p.m. Wife is in bed (when did she come in? She always does this!  Slips in unnoticed without so much as a hello or a bag of Snickers. Or did she speak to me when I was engaged in writing that poem about dandruff?)  I have a sudden urge to smoke a cigarette, but realize I don't smoke and don't want to and so I fix myself a healthy hot fudge sundae and get back to writing.  I write to a publisher.  I write to my agent.  I field several email rejection letters, curse these editors under my breath, and send the rejected material back out again.  

11:30 p.m.  Going to bed without a cigarette.  Gather up books for future research.  Glad I don't have worms.

(Rise and Repeat)