Time is not on my side
You'd think that with as long as I've been writing for newspapers I would have learned about deadlines by now.
As in, that it's a good idea not to have a whole bunch of them right at the same time. Especially when you've got only a finite amount of time available for work and a lot of things demanding your attention. Like, three small people dependent upon you for all the daily necessities of life.
However, I am a fool and I am always overly-optimistic about my capabilities when I am scheduling things, and as a result I have a whole bunch of stories all due within a week of each other.
My desk is swimming in pieces of paper torn out of my notebook, each page covered in scribbles legible only to me. I have half-a-dozen Word documents open on my computer, filled with notes, story outlines, and to-do lists. There are toys and graham cracker crumbs all over the floor of the office, where I was attempting to get Evie to entertain herself while I was writing this morning. We won't even talk about the way the rest of my house looks. Actually, the bathrooms were getting so yucky that I just had to clean them today, deadlines or not.
Did I mention that Lucy and I are also working very, very hard on potty-training? Which means I'm spending a lot of time sitting on the floor of the bathroom (which is why I was so aware of how much it needed to be cleaned) reading from the nursery rhyme book over and over, while she sits on her little Dora potty seat and tries to figure out how to do her business.
Time. How is it that no matter what's going on, there just never seems to be enough of it?
As in, that it's a good idea not to have a whole bunch of them right at the same time. Especially when you've got only a finite amount of time available for work and a lot of things demanding your attention. Like, three small people dependent upon you for all the daily necessities of life.
However, I am a fool and I am always overly-optimistic about my capabilities when I am scheduling things, and as a result I have a whole bunch of stories all due within a week of each other.
My desk is swimming in pieces of paper torn out of my notebook, each page covered in scribbles legible only to me. I have half-a-dozen Word documents open on my computer, filled with notes, story outlines, and to-do lists. There are toys and graham cracker crumbs all over the floor of the office, where I was attempting to get Evie to entertain herself while I was writing this morning. We won't even talk about the way the rest of my house looks. Actually, the bathrooms were getting so yucky that I just had to clean them today, deadlines or not.
Did I mention that Lucy and I are also working very, very hard on potty-training? Which means I'm spending a lot of time sitting on the floor of the bathroom (which is why I was so aware of how much it needed to be cleaned) reading from the nursery rhyme book over and over, while she sits on her little Dora potty seat and tries to figure out how to do her business.
Time. How is it that no matter what's going on, there just never seems to be enough of it?
2 comments:
Sorry that you are without time!
Where are your stories being published? I would love to read them.
Treasure, I write mainly for the local newspapers, the Democrat-Herald and Gazette-Times. I usually write for the Sunday Home & Garden section, and for a monthly business magazine they put out called InBusiness. I think you could probably find links to both those things at www.democratherald.com.
My other main client right now is the Albany School District. I put out a district newsletter for them three times a year, and I don't think it's online; I think the only way you can get ahold of that is if you live in within the Greater Albany Public School District, in which case it will automatically be mailed to your house. I don't think they send it to Seattle, sorry :)
To be honest, most of the stuff I write for pay isn't super-interesting. I've recently joined a writing group with some friends though and am working on trying to get some of my more creative writing published. If that ever happens, I'll let you know.
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