You Know It’s The Wrong Time of Your Life to Write A Novel When

1:15 pm: Read stories to Trombone. Hug him. Kiss him. Cover him with a quilt. Take Fresco to other room.

1:30 pm: Fresco asleep. Come downstairs.

1:33 pm: Drink glass of water. Open novel document.

1:35 pm: Type seven words. Hear Trombone rattling door handle. The other day he managed to get the door open. (Yes, it did take him longer to figure this out than it does most children. Yes, I was appropriately grateful for this.) Heart sinks to stomach.

1:37 pm: Go upstairs and ask Trombone what is wrong. He tells me he has a poopy diaper. He is right, he does. It is good of him to have told me. I tell him this, change his diaper, accompany him back to bed.

1:42 – 1:52 pm: Back downstairs. Type. Try to think of a character name that does not start with “T” because almost all of my characters have names that start with “T”.

1:52 pm: Fresco wakes screaming.

1:53 pm – 2:10 pm: Jiggle Fresco. Burp Fresco. Nurse Fresco back to sleep.

2:10 – 2:30 pm: Back downstairs. Type.

2:31 pm: Trombone is crying and rattling door handle. Claims “there is something” on his hand. There is nothing on his hand. Nevertheless, he is bawling. Bawling. Bawling. I allow him to come downstairs because now he will not nap and if I make him stay in his room he will just yell and I will still not be able to concentrate. Puffy-eyed, he watches The Wiggles while I finish my sentence and count words in today’s novel installment. Exactly 1,000.

2:45 pm: Type whiny blog post while The Wiggles do their Wiggly thing. (New Wiggles, not Old Wiggles. Did you know there was a difference? True.)

Margaret Laurence’s autobiography states that she wrote her novels at the kitchen table while her children were asleep. Alas, the autobiography does not specify how she pulled this off and of course, she is dead so I cannot say to her, “How the fuck did you write The Stone Angel with two children in your house?”

I am guessing she put drugs in their oatmeal at lunchtime.

Total word count: 11,141. I have already killed off two people so I can’t stop now.