writing day - Alexandra Naughton

 

 

7:00 a.m. wake up before my alarm, think about the cereal that I'm going to eat for breakfast.

8:00 a.m. sit down at my computer with my bowl of cereal and start working to clear out the inbox for my job.

9:00 a.m. should I write today? Will I have time to write today? Will I make time to write today? Will I feel like writing today?

10:30 a.m. my first meeting of the day over zoom. It lasts 40 minutes, we talk about work and going to concerts again in the future.

11:30 a.m. my grocery delivery arrives while I'm in the middle of another zoom meeting discussing product marketing. I turn my camera off so I can retrieve the bags at the bottom of my driveway.

12:00 p.m. time for lunch and I'm looking forward to quickly eating the grocery store veggie sushi in my refrigerator with maybe some of those buffalo chicken nuggets I ordered from the prepared foods section before my next meeting.

12:30 p.m. another meeting over zoom, and then more zoom meetings the rest of the day interspersed with brief bouts of answering work emails. All work, all on my computer, at my desk, the place where I should be writing where I am not writing.

5:00 p.m. put on a sports bra, gym shorts, and an extra layer of deodorant and leave my house for the gym to run on an elliptical trainer for sixty minutes while I read The Year of the Comet by Sergei Lebedev. It gives me good ideas of how to write better sentences and makes me feel insufficient in my craft but also inspired by the beauty of words when strung together in interesting ways.

7:00 p.m. walk home from the gym and think about what I'm going to eat for dinner and maybe if I have the energy and don't get sucked into answering more emails for my job maybe I will work on my novel, the document that has been haunting my google drive for the past four years.

7:30 p.m. sit at my desk at my computer and reply to emails for my job while mindlessly eating a salad and more of those chicken nuggets.

7:45 p.m. time to get out of these damp gym clothes and take a shower.

8:28 p.m. sit down at my computer with a cup of tea while scrolling facebook and try to resist commenting on a joke made in poor taste in some meme group I'm a member of.

8:40 p.m. remember that I still need to read and write a critique for a piece another writer submitted for a workshop I'm participating in.

8:55 p.m. get distracted by a detail in the piece I am reading to critique and google the cost and availability of 16mm motion picture film, then spend 10 minutes looking into who Lucian Freud is.

10:03 p.m. evening workout.

11:07 p.m. okay, finished reading the piece now start typing out this critique. Just get a few sentences in and save it.

11:39 p.m. maybe I'll wake up early tomorrow morning before the company meeting and work on my novel, I'm too tired now.

11:45 p.m. get into bed and find a true crime podcast on youtube to fall asleep listening to.

 

Alexandra Naughton is a writer in California. Some of her books include American Mary (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), A Place A Feeling Something He Said To You (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2020), You Could Never Objectify Me More Than I’ve Already Objectified Myself (Punk Hostage Press, 2015), My Posey Taste Like: The Paradise Lost Edition (Bottlecap Press, 2017), among others. She is founder and editor in chief of Be About It Press.