My Ideal Birthday

[Writers Plot]

posted by Doranna

Being left alone to work.

Okay, that's really strange. When I step back to look at it, I know that. When people take time off--when they dream about time off--they generally daydream themselves a day away from whatever it is they do for a living. A day away from the drudge and mudge. Dinners out, social gatherings, beer and cake and wahoo!

Well, sure, over the years I've done some of that. Kinda depends where I am at the time, and whether I can afford to take the day off, and what day of the week it is (which affects what the other folks in my life might want to do). In the best of times, I can manage a nice mix, and have my quiet writing time, a break for good food and good company, and then return to the writing. Major yum, any way you look at it.

But as much as I enjoy that time, what I yearn for--what I constantly yearn for--is being left alone to work. I want whole days to myself, where that phone doesn't ring, where I eat nothing but cereal and Pop Tarts, where the laundry piles up in the corner and the dishes in the sink. If someone knocks on the door, they find stray words sticking to my cheek or tangled in my hair; if they call on the phone, when I answer I'll sound so distant that they immediately ask if they woke me (oh, wait...that last bit happens all the time anyway).

Okay, the dogs have to be fed. The horse has to be fed. And it's not good to be a slug, so let's add some exercise moments--riding said horse, training said dogs. But here's the glorious thing--those activities are perfect opportunities to walk away from the process of putting words to paper (or file) and letting them simmer a bit in the backbrain. They don't distract from the writing as much as they layer with it. Trail rides are especially good for this, letting the hindbrain siphon wonderful energy from the combined joys of being on the horse and being in the woods.

Every now and then it strikes me that my way of looking at my vocation--my avocation--is slightly out of step with the rest of the world. That so many other people sit at work and think about what they'll do on their time off--that game they intend to bowl, that dinner party they'll attend, that vacation trip they'll take. I not only can't remember the last actual vacation I took--I think it would be back in my early twenties--I suspect that if I went to the beach or went on a cruise or did any of those vacationy things, I'd end up sitting in blissful isolation somewhere with words tangled in my hair.

One might surmise from the subject of this post that I've blundered through another birthday. Last week, in fact...and you can also surmise from my missing blog post that it also wasn't the sort of week that left me alone long enough for a day of writing, writing, writing.

But, you know...there's always next year...