Bronwyn Green's Writing Day

When I was young and enamored with the idea of becoming a writer, my head was filled with images of elaborately carved writing desks, bay windows with cushioned seats overlooking a garden and leather bound journals where I’d lovingly craft my stories.

I can hear your laughter from here… It’s okay. I’m laughing too. I have no idea what prompted these romanticized images, but let me tell you about my real life where I do lovingly (most of the time) craft my stories.
My day…let me tell you about it.

5:15 AM: The alarm goes off at the buttcrack of dawn, and I beg my husband to hit the snooze.

5:30 AM: The alarm goes off again and I drag myself downstairs, turn on my laptop and check my email, answer anything pressing, make a pot of coffee and/or tea, take something out of the freezer for supper and take a shower.

6:20 AM: I wake up my two boys and coerce (threaten) them downstairs and into the shower.

6:50 – 7:45 AM: We leave to pick up another boy, drop two off at the high school and the youngest off at the elementary school.

8:15 – 9:30 AM Water aerobics with Brynn Paulin and Mia Watts. Hilarious fun!

9:30 – 2:00 PM: I check emails again, throw supper in the crockpot. Depending on the day, I’ll either write or work at my other job. When I’m not writing, I edit for an awesome publishing house. In addition to my group of authors, I oversee the proofreading program, the beta reading program and coordinate reviews. There are a lot of emails that go back and forth every day. When I’m not doing day job activities, I start writing as much as I can. Some days, I do really well – other days...not so much. One thing that helps is Twitter. (Don’t laugh – it’s not just for wasting time!) There’s a loose group of people who write at around the same time I do and we report our hourly totals to each other…and the web. The hashtag is #rpwordwar if anyone wants to join in.

2:00 – 4:00 PM: I pick up my oldest and my car pool kids, drop the car pool kids off at their houses, go to another high school and pick up a friend’s daughter, go to the elementary school and pick up my youngest and my friend’s youngest daughter, drop them off at their house come home, get my boys started on their homework and try to write a little more. During this time period I have awesome conversations with them about girls, zombies, music, life, girl island, Jedis, the apocalypse. World of Warcraft, books, movies, vampires and life in general. I LOVE this time of day. Not the driving, but the conversations I have with these amazing teenagers.

4:45 – 6:30 PM: Homework patrol and scrambling around for supper, if I was super clever and forgot to put something in the crockpot. There’s also more writing or working – depending on what I’m doing that day.

6:30 - 8:00 PM: Eat supper and hang out with hubby and the boys.

8:00 – 11:00+ PM: More multi-tasking – writing, blogging (trying to do it more at night) answering emails, working the day job (luckily, I have a flexible schedule) and more writing if family and day job allow. I will admit to taking a break on Tuesday nights to watch Glee with my sister and Supernatural on Fridays with Brynn.
Granted, it’s summertime now, so there’s a little less driving and I get to sleep past 5:30, but for nine months out of the year, this is my life.

So there it is. There’s no window seat overlooking a garden, certainly no fabulous period costumes or leather bound journals. There’s a lot of time spent in my car, there’s also a lot of time cleaning up cat puke. We have six rescue cats and well…sometimes, it’s messy. My life isn’t glamorous, but most of the time, it is fun. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.