ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG

Everyone I know is going back to work today. I am staying at home, having taken a two extra weeks of leave this holiday season, and it feels utterly decadent to know that I’m still fifteen days away from my return to the day-job. On the other hand, the lack of regular work schedule has meant that I don’t do my grocery shopping on a regular schedule, and I am now out of coffee. It’s all swings and roundabouts in the end. I have hit the scene on the current work in progress where it would be really useful to know what’s going on, so I’ve spent the morning writing little page-long myths and legends about the characters in the novel so their back-story is fleshed out enough to give me something to work with. Now I shall do grocery shopping, ’cause the need for coffee is pressing.

I lose track of things when I don’t go to work. Things like what day it is, what time it is, when it was that I last ate. My sleep patterns go to hell. I’ll sit down to type an email at 10 AM and look up to discover that it’s now 4 AM the following morning and I’ve eaten nothing but cheese slices for the last nine hours. There’s a reason I dislike taking holidays. A lot of the advice around writing is built around habit, and habits are burnt in by particular triggers and sequences of behaviour. Most of mine are built around going to and from work, which makes the absence of work problematic. Even worse is this: I am pretty good at avoiding the siren song of the internet when I’ve only got an hour or two to get some writing done. I am terrible at it when I’ve got an entire day to work with and no pressing reason to do things now. Net result: December will have the lowest cumulative word-count I’ve had in over a year. It’s been making me kinda grumpy. Increasingly so, over the past few days. Because I am an idiot, it’s taken me eleven days to realise that I already had a sequence of habits coded in that would combat this. They just didn’t involve the computer. So, today, I did a sensible thing that I should have done ten days back, when the time away from work kicked off –

In Brisbane – and in much of the rest of Australia – people tend to have a “local” when it comes to their coffee. The place that does it better than everywhere else, that will serve you a breakfast that’s just a little bit better than everywhere else, and generally has an atmosphere conducive to spending quality time enjoying said coffee and breakfast. (There are rumours, in other countries, that cafes serve things like lunch and dinner, but that shit is un-Australian. You go to your cafe for breakfast and coffee dammit) My local cafe shut down for the holidays. They don’t re-open until after Australia Day. For weeks now I have ducked across the train tracks just outside my apartment, stumbled the hand-full of meters to my local, and ordered a pretty damn good flat white and an outstanding avocado on toast concoction that came with an assortment of nuts, a whole goddamn spice-rack full of herbs, and tiny, delicious slices of radish. I am devastated and, quite frankly, in need of coffee.I am tempted to take to the streets, coffee mug in hand, and a sign reading “will write words for caffeination.”  

It’s summer. It’s hot. I’m already covered in an obscene amount of sweat and it hasn’t even crossed 9:00 AM here in Brisbane. I’m off to write club in a half-hour, so putting on the air conditioning for such a short period isn’t really cost-effective. And I just got news of a short-story acceptance, so I can think of no better time to hang out the single and say: See you all tomorrow, peeps. If you feel the need for your daily dose of writing neepery, may I suggest checking out this post at writerly scrawls about taking the stress out of freelancing.