First, good news: Gail at www.5minutefiction.co.uk emailed me to say she’ll be publishing a flash fiction piece I submitted! It’ll be on the site in mid-October. I am thrilled! My submission record is shocking - I still get crippling crises of confidence, and I’ve only actually ever finished and submitted five pieces of fiction, so I’m delighted with this. ‘Someone looked at it and didn’t think it was rubbish!’ I keep thinking. Ditto with the story that reached shortlist stage in a recent Writing Magazine competition. These are the things that keep me going.
I’ve been thinking about time to write this week, because I’ve had loads of it. Nothing but time. ‘If I had time I’d…’ How often have you heard that? Or perhaps said it? If you’ve been getting serious about your writing - or anything you love doing and want to better yourself at - you’ll know that you don’t wait for time. You make it.
Of course, sometimes, rarely, the world makes something easy for you. For a week, I’ve had the house to myself. Himself went off on a camping trip in Yorkshire, and for a couple of reasons I didn’t accompany him. One, my wallet’s feeling a bit tender, and two, I’m really really enjoying being at home at the moment. We spent nine weeks cycle-touring in France earlier this year and although it was amazing and wonderful and I’d have been happy to keep going, since we came back I have fallen in love with my home and this beautiful corner of the world all over again.
Because Himself is also my sole source of employment at the moment, this meant that I didn’t have any work. A whole week at home, alone, on enforced leave! Though I didn’t set any special writing targets for the week, I was curious about how much I’d achieve with other obligations and distractions removed.
The answer is: nothing extra. Not a bit. No extra wordage, no more than the average number of ideas and scribbling. This sounds pathetic on the face of it, given all that free time. Perhaps I should have set specific targets, but you know what? I don’t care. The great carpet of time in front of me last Monday morning felt daunting rather than liberating. Perhaps this raises questions about my staying power, and about how I’d cope if I one day write myself into being a full-time writer, but I’ll say it again: I don’t care. A week like this won’t come around again for years, if ever, and I’ve had a great time: loads of cycling in wind and sun; walking around the paths on the headland that I’ve neglected of late in favour of the bike; working in the graveyard; even a little gardening; the usual amount of writing; sorting out un-needed stuff for a future car-boot sale; washing every textile in the house; tea with a scone and jam and cream in the old drawing room of our nearby hotel; and reading reading reading. I’ve hardly stopped. Novels and notebooks are all over the bed, not just on my side of it. It’s been just lovely.
I love writing. But I love doing other things too. I’m happy that for a week, I’ve had the chance to enjoy being at home, doing exactly what I want, when and where the fancy takes me.
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