A newish sort of friend <insert long, complicated story here> wanted to know what I do with my time at home writing. I felt like snarkily showing her one of those writing memes like this:

Clock with the phrase "Writer's Clock on it" with "Write" at 12, "Coffee" at 1, "Review" at 2, "Edit" at 3, "Start over" at 4, "Drink Heavily" at 5, "Cry" at 6, "Consider a new career" at 7, "More coffee" at 8, "Write" at 9, "Submit" at 10, and "Wait" at 11.
Text that reads: Writing-is-a-bitch wrote: "writing is the worst. u wanna write a single, passing line of dialogue so u fact check it to make sure it's historically accurate, then suddenly you've lost track of time, space,, urself. for intstance: I wanted to know how frequently fighter planes were used in WWI and now I'm several pages deep into the history of witchcraft in Ireland." brieflywritingwolf replied: "this is it. this is what writing is like." source: writing-is-a-bitch

Instead I’ll just say it here. Some days “writing” is character sketching on an iPad version of a worksheet I like with an Apple pencil, some days “writing” is world building like literally making maps on a really cool website someone from writers group suggested, some days “writing” the world building looks more like answering a questionnaire about your imaginary country, some days “writing” is actually literally just writing on the novel, some days “writing” is doing a tarot spread for a character or Meyers-Briggs tests for recalcitrant characters that refuse to do anything useful, some days “writing” is writing poetry to use as hymns to be sung in the background of a scene that you wrote last year and put <insert words from hymn here>, sometimes “writing” is gathering up all my notes from my desk & purse notebook & van notebook & husband’s car & the table by my favorite green chair & the back of the kids band calendar & a bulletin from church and typing it all in or doing voice transcriptions because my hands hurt that day, some times “writing” is reading up on things I know I don’t do well enough or things that I see other people doing awesomely that I want to emulate or just re-reading my own stuff because I don’t remember where I was going with that bit of something in Chapter 3, sometimes “writing” is making the perfect playlist on Spotify for upcoming scenes that you know you won’t be able to write without intense music, sometimes “writing” is searching for stock photos of interesting people so you’ll know what a character looks like later on, some times writing is going to writer’s group or writing class and doing silly prompts and listening to other writers talk about their novels and writing and sharing tips and resources and lending each other books, and sometimes it’s just starting out the window for an hour daydreaming about leaves falling from trees because my mind refuses to tell me what the next thing I need to write looks like.

There ya go… that’s why I’m spending so much time “writing” and that’s why I need a planner for just “writing stuff.” 🙂