Exit velocity looks a lot like a breakdown.

Q: Balancing work and home life, do you work set hours, or do you find the writing work flow demands different time from you depending on where in the process you are?

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Ha! This is a timely question, because I am at the dot-eyed and gibbering stage of getting a book finished. Which is to say, a first draft. By a week on Friday I want to have this story chipped out of the ground without breaking bits off (as Stephen King puts it). I want to have this baby born, as I put it, even if it's purple and squalling and covered in that waxy stuff and I then have to deal with the meconium and a good bit of stitching. 

So . . . there is no life/work balance at the moment. To wit, my day:

1.  open my eyes and wonder if that was real people I just dreamt about or if it was my characters. And if it was, can I use any of the dream? 

2.  will myself to stick to the morning exercise regime knowing that I'll feel better for doing it. The regime is called "field bounce Stacey" which means walk to the end of the field to sit in a chair and meditate with the cows, jump on my trampoline for the duration of a Radio 4 show (26mins), then work through one of the videos my yoga teacher sent out during the start of the lockdown.(By the way, I do know that having "walk to the end of your own field" as a possibility is why lockdown felt okay to me. So I'm jammy but, I hope, not actually sickening - like those people in an old rectory in Somerset with a swimming pool and a paddock full of donkeys wondering aloud why a single parent home-schooling three kids in a tower block is being so negative.) Sorry. Off-topic. My head is a bit fizzy because of the finishing a book thing.

3. sit at my desk and write like a dervish, making a thousand notes on scraps of paper about what I've messed up for now and can't fix just yet but shouldn't forget in draft two. These notes are illegible but that's okay because I'll never look at them.

4. Type and weep. 

5. Type and eat.

Typical end-of-book lunch scene

6. Type and weep.

7. Cook. Or interfere to no purpose if Neil's cooking.

8. Watch an episode of Cats Countdown or Pointless to try to stop thinking about the book.

9. Sit in front of an award-winning comedy or ground-breaking drama, stony-faced and miles away. Neil: Book? Me: Yep. Neil: It'll be ok- Sorry. Me: Good.

10. Lie in bed, staring up into the dark, wondering if there's any way to save this book.

But I'm not complaining. A week on Friday, I will print it out and dance around. Also, there's nothing else I'd rather do. Plus, my constant companion for this last fourteen months of being at home is every bit as focussed on his work as I am on my mine, so he's never scratching at the door whining for me to stop typing and play.

If I was going to complain, I'd complain about this: today is Doughnut Day aka 2+2 day. I'm two weeks past my second COVID jab and the world's my free Krispy Kreme if I show my vaccination card. But the next week is the one I mark in my diary as "say no to everything". Well, it's not as if I haven't been practising.