The Write Time

When Friday rolled around last week, I was pleased to realize that I had pressing to do this weekend, not many errands, and very little laundry. I was done with everything by early Saturday afternoon. Now I had plenty of time to write!

Right?

Wrong.

Looking back, I am amazed at how much time I frittered away doing nothing. Well, maybe not nothing. My husband and I did go out for dinner and a movie (or, in the lingo of the Midwest, which my husband speaks, “the show”) on Saturday night. And I did finish the book I’d been reading since before Christmas (not because I was struggling through a boring story, but because I generally have to impose limits on how much time I can spend reading.) Then there was the weekly housecleaning, which in our small, temporary living quarters never takes very long. Plus I touched up my hair on Sunday (my hairdresser is 1,200 miles away, in Florida.)

Speaking of 1,200, that’s the number of words I wrote all weekend: 1,272.

On weekdays, when I’m on a temp assignment, I usually get in 45 minutes at the keyboard before leaving for work. That yielded 677 words this morning. I also write during my lunch break on my QuickPad (an electronic, battery-operated keyboard,) plus I usually manage to get a few pages done when I’m supposed to be working (the beauty of being a temp.) That made for another 798 words.

So, 1,272 words over two days off, and 1,475 in a single day when I spend eight hours at work. It doesn’t seem plausible that I can write so little with so much spare time and write so much when I have practically none. But that's what happened to me the last couple of weekends, ever since I started working again after a five-week break.

Weird, isn’t it?