Writing Around Family Life

Every morning, my husband makes me a cup of coffee and sets it beside my laptop. But it’s a while before I actually drink it. It takes a team effort to get the kid out the door for school and then Neil and Isla get in the car, and I turn on some music in the kitchen. The type of music reflects how the rest of the day will go.

I might do some laps around the house and pretend my living room is a library (because it kind of is) before I do the day’s writing session.

Last week, I parked in front of the laptop and reached for my coffee mug.

But it was stuck to the table.

We’re not coaster people.

It’s how we live dangerously.

If I used half of my pickle jar strength to turn the mug, coffee would slosh on the keyboard, and everyone knows how much I enjoy shorting out keyboards. Since I’m on my fourth one in five years, I contemplated slurping coffee using just my face, before I remembered we had straws. But Isla likes to use them, and she hadn’t decided what her favourite colour was that day, so I left them alone.

And I promise you, I wrote about six hundred uncafeinated words.

Neil came back and saw that I was maybe more frazzled than usual and freed the mug without a word.

‘I loosened it, though,’ I said as he went down the hall to the office.

‘I know,’ he shuts his door. Because he has one to shut. I continue to write, fuelled up.

But then. I need something to go with the coffee. I get a snack. I’m eating, and I can’t type with one hand, so I go off window, and look for bloopers to watch. I watch. And then I clean the house a little before the PA comes.

And then she arrives, followed soon after by the first of two deliveries. By then, I’m not writing. I don’t know what I’m doing but it’s not writing.

I get in the car to pick up the kid. I don’t take my phone. Sometimes I write notes on there.

Isla gets in the car and we actually count sheep. We get home and my lukewarm coffee is cold, Isla says she wants a surprise for lunch. We eat. I take a shower. No writing in there, but my best ideas, however fleeting. Of course.

Out and the house has gotten loud, Neil’s out for lunch. Isla’s on cartoons. I check the words. I have a lot of windows open. And where is that music coming from, really?

Facebook shouts at me. And so I close all the windows.

Auto-save saves, right?

I back away. Play cards, listen to knock-knock jokes, make some lists, put dates on the calendar.

And at the end of the day, after the park, after dinner. I go back to the words, some of them were even good.

However, for one day, last week. Auto-save did not actually save.

And so, I wrote some more.

When you’ve lost your words, write some more.