With apologies to Todd Rundgren...

I don’t want to work, I just want to bang on the keys all day!

I miss writing. Now that I’ve returned to the M-F workaday world (at least temporarily), my writing time is all but nil. Add in the class I just finished teaching, and the book I’m editing (for pay!), and keeping the house running, there’s no more time for me. Hubby and I have wondered repeatedly, how did we ever have time to raise kids?!

Of course any of us who write seriously know it truly is work, just not (for most of us) the paying kind. Which means we have to spend too many precious hours on those pursuits which do bring in the money necessary for little things like food and housing. And I suppose Mr. Rundgren would say the same about his drumming. It reminds me of the memes floating around the Internet lately picturing what the world thinks of this occupation or that and what the job really entails. Serious writing is work, and deadlines, and frustration, but for me, it’s also life. I need to write.

I’m pushing deadline for the book edit. Fifteen-plus pages to finish rewriting by Friday night, since Saturday I’ll be at the Antioch Writers Workshop genre session all day (working, not writing). Class is done; all my narrative evaluations for the students have been submitted. I still want to write a few paragraphs in review of each research paper for personal communication with the students, and I’d like to have that done before spring quarter starts in a few days, but I have a bit of leeway with that self-imposed assignment.

So maybe, just maybe, if I survive this week, I’ll be able to turn my attention to the long-neglected novel which needs more TLC before I pitch it at the Mad Anthony Writers Conference in two weeks. Then of course there’s the short story anthology piece for my Tuesday writers group which I haven’t started yet, and resubmitting several recently-rejected pieces, and all those new ideas that flit through my brain as I’m falling asleep or daydreaming through yet another meeting...

Where’s that drum keyboard...and the hours?