Kate Constable's Blog

Three More Days, Three More Days...

The alert reader of these musings may have noticed not much talk about writing lately. Particularly since the summer holidays started. Even as I type this, a child is calling impatiently for me to play Go Fish with her. But frankly, the whole of last year (apart from Swoosie of course!) was a bit of a write off (ho ho) on that front.

But THIS year is going to be different. Oh, yes. Child no 1 and child no 2 will both be at school. A-aaall day. That's right, from 9 till 3.30, my time is my own. Okay, from 9.15 till 3.15, to allow for drop off and pick up travel time. So say, six hours. Subtract 45 minutes for yoga, that leaves 5 and a quarter hours. I guess I will have to do some minimal housework - just the usual bed-making, laundry, shopping, tidying up, washing the dishes, cleaning the toilet - not cooking - I can cook when the kids get home. Let's say half an hour a day?

That leaves 4 and three quarter hours for work. Oh, wait, what about a lunch break, better give myself 45 minutes for a sandwich and a cuppa. Okay, four hours a day for writing.

Oh, hang on, there's all that businessy stuff I usually do while Evie is playing in the background - answering emails, blogging (ahem), googling myself (ahem). Hm, I can fritter away a couple of hours a day on that stuff normally. But the New Me will cut it down to half an hour. So I've got three and a half hours for creativity.

But I will need to feed my brain as well as wringing stuff out of it, won't I. That's the joy of being at home, right, the freedom to read and think, uninterrupted? Is an hour a day reading time too much to ask? But that only leaves two and half hours for writing...

And what if I want to chat to my mum on the phone, or walk down to the shops, or hear the preppies reading, or cover some books for the school library, or go to the library myself? What if my friend makes good his threat to find me a part-time paid job this year? What if I want to go out for coffee with my husband, or join a choir, or a book club? Where's that time going to come from?

Suddenly my long free day doesn't feel so luxurious after all.

(Ha ha. Just kidding. It's going to be great. I have three books to work on this year, and I'm itching to get started. Three days to go, three days to go.)