Third Day of NaNoWriMo
Still Dragging
In all the years I worked, and somebody else was paying me, I couldn’t wait for the weekend or heading out the door for home in the evening. It wasn’t that I hated work; it’s just that I would rather have been doing something else, like reading or writing or eating, just something other than what I was doing at work.
Sometimes, work was fun and rewarding, but more often than not, it was a paycheck.
That paycheck paid the bills, the rent, and bought groceries. Sometimes, it paid for cars or occasionally for vacations, but otherwise, it was just a paycheck.
There was no joy in it.
I did that from when I started working in 1976 to when I retired in 2016. That’s 40 years. That’s a long time.
However, once I retired and got used to being poor again, being retired turned out to be fun. I can go to bed when I want to, stay up late, sleep in if I want to, or say to hell with it. I’m not getting dressed today.
The part I love best is not being required to answer the phone. Not all that many people call. I mean, I can count them on one hand. But when I was working, I had to talk to whoever called. I can remember being so stressed that I had to force myself to take a deep breath just to answer the phone. You never knew who would be on the other end, and generally, they paid me to be nice.
When I went through menopause at the job, I can remember being of short temper. Once, I answered the phone and said, “Talk fast!” It was the boss. I didn’t know who would be on the other end of the phone. Usually, I could tell with my awesome psychic powers when he was going to call. That time, I didn’t.
I believe he was somewhat peeved with me.
Looking at the brighter side of retirement, I realized again the other day how the light inside the house shifts during the day. When the sun comes in the front door and windows in the morning, it is a soft light. And in the morning, the light in the study is bright. I can see much more detail than in the early evening when darkness peeks into the backyard.
I’ve been able to be with our cats throughout the day. When I was at work, I never knew what they did to entertain themselves. Turns out they sleep. All day long. Sometimes, the three of them pile up on the bed. It’s one big pile of cats, and you can hardly tell where one starts and the other ends. And I thought they missed me when I was at work. Shows how much I know. They do, however, get terrific doorman service when they spend the morning out on the patio and then want to come in after their morning constitutional up and down the block.
So, the problem is with all of that free time in the projects I take on, especially regarding the housewifery involved in editing a book, I would rather clean the toilet.
That’s what I did yesterday to avoid having to work on my book.
Hey, this is my brainchild. I spent a long time writing it, and I spent just as much time rewriting that first draft and coping with the first round of editing. I can’t say they weren’t mistakes, but I sort of swept up all those word clippings scattered all over the floor.
Then, I gave it to my husband to read and didn’t hear anything from him for a month and a half.
I finally screwed up the courage to ask him about it. He said my grammar sucked, and he couldn’t read past the first three pages. I wonder when he was going to tell me that. After I’d written another three books? Anyway, I thanked him for the advice to run it through Grammarly.
It turns out I couldn’t get Grammarly to work with Atticus, the software I’d used to write the book. Yesterday and today, I transferred the book via the olde cut-and-paste method into Scrivener, where Grammarly does work. I fussed around with the titles for each section and busied myself with the busy work.
Now, I find I can’t get going again.
So, I thought to myself, what if I pretended somebody was paying me for the editing and rewriting services? I could just pretend I’m an editor and don’t care two cents for the feelings of the piece’s author. It’s like reconciling your own checkbook. If the money belongs to you, the reconciliation takes on an emotional charge. If it’s somebody else’s checkbook, it’s just numbers.
I can get in there with my green pen and go to town. And, at the end of the day, no matter what I was working on, I’d get paid.
And, yes, I’m aware I said green pen when, in all truthfulness, I wanted to say red pen. My husband set me straight some years ago and said that in the “business,” they use a green pen. He might have been talking about the newspaper business, but who knows? Set me straight if you know for sure.
The green pen travels.
I can’t say I’m a qualified editor, but I’m all I’ve got right now. Until I’ve got some income coming in and can pay somebody to do it for me, and in lieu of somebody helpful enough to do it for me in some publishing house that can’t wait to see my book finished, I’ll do it myself.
Meanwhile, all the time I’ve spent today has worn me out.
I think I’ll take a nap. However, I’ll have to make the cats move first.
Thanks for reading.
The Links: Scrivener — Get a discount and sign up for NaNoWriMo Spring Camp during April and get a 20% discount for participating or a 50% discount if you finish your goal of writing. Normally, Scrivener is $60. If you sign up for NaNoWriMo, the program is $48, and if you finish your goal (you set it) for the April Spring Camp at NaNoWriMo, it will be $30. I like the program. NaNoWriMo Participant Rewards for Spring, 2024
