I always find it fascinating how authors plan their days, around work, households etc and Carol is kindly sharing with us a day in her life! *Spoiler* Mr Grumpy may or may not appear!
My life is a little odd as I am somewhat reclusive and live in the country on a windy hill with my retired grumpy guts.
Life begins in the grumpy household as soon as Mr G gets up, usually about five or six o’clock. The chances are I’ll only have had a couple of hours sleep by then, but he is mindful of that and tiptoes about, trying not to disturb me, before creeping downstairs to dress. In spite of his efforts, I wake up and my brain goes straight into plot mode. I use the time in bed to “get into character” if I am writing a book. Like method acting, I try to imagine all my characters lives and their backstories. I want them to be as vivid or real as possible. It occasionally gets me into trouble like the time when I was trying to get into the mind of a psychotic husband murderer who was plotting to kill her husband by putting glass in a McDonald’s Happy Meal.
After half an hour, Mr Grumpy will begin whistling tunefully downstairs which is actually code for “Are you going to lie there all day?” so I get up and after a cup of tea with him, I’ll spend time on marketing and media. That involves scheduling tweets and blog posts and answering my emails or organising interviews. If I get through them quickly enough, I’ll begin working on my book.
If I’m researching rather than writing or editing, mornings are given over to housework. When we moved to this house I had a major declutter and disposed of all our old ‘stuff’ so it’s easy to look after with lots of open space – very feng shui!
In spite of me being rude about him, Grumpy and I spend a lot of time together and we go try to break the day up by going out for a walk or to town. Much depends on my schedule and last year there was little time for anything other than a snatched half an hour over a cup of tea. I planned to slow down in 2020, to go travelling and spend more time on new activities and well… the virus put paid to much of that, however, I got to spend a lot more time with him.
The afternoon is always used for writing/planning/researching/editing (whatever stage I am at in a book) until it is time to prepare dinner. I’m not a great cook but since Mr G bought me a Jamie Oliver cookbook, I have improved greatly. Summertime he gets salad!
Mr Grumpy goes to bed at about nine o’clock to listen to the radio and I head back to my office where I’ll hunker down for the night. This is my time. There’s no noise to disturb me; only the odd owl hooting and I can work until I am ready to grab some sleep. My room is on a separate staircase to the master bedroom so I don’t disturb him with my typing.
I’ll work all night or until I feel my eyelids drooping then I’ll totter off to bed and grab some shut-eye until Mr G starts shifting and gets up and the day begins again.
Thank you for sharing your day with us! It sounds like time well spent and it must be nice to spend some time with Mr G!!
Until next time xxx
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