I try to block off weekend mornings to sit down and really focus on writing. It’s pretty much the only time of the week when I can get three or four hours uninterrupted to focus on a section that’s complicated or requires a lot of detail. Usually I can manage a couple of thousand words a day on Saturday and Sunday. Through the week, I’m lucky if I can squeeze in 500 somewhere between getting home from work, making dinner, and getting to bed at something like a reasonable hour. So yeah, I put a premium on my weekends not because I’m running off to some exciting locale, but because it’s when I feel like I’m doing my best work. In college, I did my best work in the dead of night. That’s when the words flowed best. Now that I’ve conditioned myself into a morning person, I guess the sweet spot has shifted too. That’s really not the point, though.

Today is Saturday and what I really want to be doing is sitting here taking a stab at the next chapter. Unfortunately, what I’m really doing is sitting here paying bills, cleaning up the balls of dirt, dust, and dog hair that are large enough to qualify as a third dog, and installing a new toilet seat (don’t ask). Today is pretty much catching up on all the stuff a normal person would have kept up with during the week. Me, not so much. I’m determined to pretend that I have a second full time career as a writer… and time slips away accordingly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the basement and rummage around for a crescent wrench. Either this bolt’s coming off or the whole damned thing will shatter. Maybe I should go ahead and turn the water off while I’m down there.

If I don’t flood the house in the next hour and I can manage to get the grass cut in a reasonable amount of time, maybe, just maybe, I can salvage some quality time to write this afternoon… Just in time to get interrupted by dinner. Lord, no wonder people never finish writing their great American novel.