Time Bandits

It’s always something.  At the beginning of November it was depression over the results of the election.  Creatives everywhere mourned.  Then I had to be out of town.  Then last weekend I had to put the plastic over the windows.  Weekends are endangered species.

The first casualty of this loss of time is my creative writing.  I tend to spend my weekends trying feverishly to catch up with the ideas that have flitted through my head all week long.  The mesh on my mental butterfly-net is too loose, however, and they tend to get away.

Saturday comes and goes.  Sunday quickly follows.  Monday I’m back in the office wondering how a human being can put up with such pressure of unexpressed ideas.  I carry a little notebook in my pocket everyday and am so busy on weekends that I don’t even open it.

I’m not complaining here.  I’m also sure that I’m far from unique when it comes to working writers who spend their days commuting, working, and generally trying to make a living.  These are the things that give ideas, and indeed, texture and verisimilitude to fiction writing.  Otherwise we’d be spending all our time locked up in our rooms writing.

Still, it does seem that those who are paid to write fiction have the edge here.  A healthy advance can buy time off waiting tables or asking “may I help you?”  My job, at least, allows me to whip out my notebook and try to swat an idea before it gets away.

Putting it all together, however, takes time.  I write from the time I get up until I run out the door to catch the bus.  At the other end of the day, all is lost.  Sleepy, irritable, and uninspired, I stumble through the door anxious for bed.

The ideas, though, aren’t respecters of fate.  They come and they invite their friends.  My head resounds with them demanding to be let out through my fingers.  “Wait until the weekend,” I beg them.  When the weekend comes I keep them locked in their pen.