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Wednesday, May 11, 2016

A Day In The Life Of A Writer

People are always asking about my writing schedule. After all, I’m retired from medicine, so I must have lots of time to write. Of course, since my latest book, Medical Judgment, releases about now, one would expect a little time to be spent in getting out the word about it, but there should be lots of time for writing. Right? Read on.
Since we just got back from a trip to the Pacific time zone, my body hasn’t adjusted, so I slept a bit longer this morning, not awakening until after 6:30 AM. Kay and I watched the news and drank our coffee. Then each of us had an English muffin and bacon while we watched a sitcom we’d recorded.
Now to write, right? Not yet. I called our financial advisor who’s decided to take his own advice and retire! I needed to know what steps he’d taken to assure continuity with his clients. It took about twenty minutes, but I hung up satisfied (with the assurance we’d have a sit-down conference in a few weeks).
Now surely it’s time to write. Nope. I located the roofer we’d been talking with, and discussed a new roof for our house (even though the current one is only a few years old). Thanks, recent hailstorm. Welcome to Texas. I’ll meet with the roofer tomorrow, but it took another twenty minutes to set this up.
Then came completing a blog interview which will run in a couple of weeks, scanning through my email, looking at the sites I follow—all of which takes us past mid-morning. Still no writing.
Kay’s working at her son’s home (he’s moving a few blocks closer, and since he’s a single parent she’s helping out). I volunteered to get the few grocery items we needed, but before leaving I wrote a few checks so I could mail them at the post office on my way to get the groceries. Then I picked up Kay and we celebrated Monday with half a barbecue sandwich and some chips for each of us. Productive morning, but no writing.
I won’t bore you with what followed. Let’s just say it was more of the same--lots more. Finally, late in the afternoon, I sat down at the computer to write. I noticed I had a new email, so I opened it. It was from Nancy Mehl, reminding me that I needed to compose this blog post and get it posted. So here it is.
But tomorrow, I promise I’ll work on my novel. In the meantime, keep an eye out for Nancy’s interview with me on this site in a bit over a week, where a random commenter can win a copy of Medical Judgment
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3 comments:

  1. The hours can pass quickly. Glad I'm not the only one who sees the day fly by.

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  2. I've heard said that you're more busy retired than when you were working...lol! But then you have the time to do the things you didn't when you worked many hours during the day. I know my mom is retired now (Oct 2015) and she keeps herself occupied with all the fun things she didn't have time for. Do you find that to be true yourself....not necessarily all fun stuff but things you simply didn't have time for before retirement? :-) Thanks for sharing your day with us Richard, I'm very much looking forward to your newest medical drama/thriller!

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  3. Thanks for your comments. I've often heard it said by retired people that they didn't know how they got it all done when they were working. The answer, of course, is that they didn't. They have a whole new set of responsibilities now. And since Medical Judgment is out, Trixi, I hope you have a chance to read (and enjoy) it.

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