My Perfect Day

Class Assignment
I was recenlty asked, for a class, to write about a perfect day in the life of a writer. I had fun with the assignment, so I thought I'd share it here. It's several paragraphs. I hope it's easy to read.

A Perfect Day as a Professional Writer

My perfect writing day is a necessarily imaginary confluence of time, place, weather and brain activity, sort of like a perfect alignment of the stars to influence world peace and understanding.

I wake up with bright sun streaming through my window, gently, not in a way that sends razor blades of light through my eyelids. My cat is calmly sleeping, curled up in a ball at the foot of my bed, quite unlike her regular routine of stepping, one sharp little foot at a time, onto my breasts, in an attempt to make me get up and give her what is obviously the best spot on the bed—the one where I so comfortably sleep. After I stretch and rearrange the magical cat and dog-hair repelling, self-cleaning covers, my clean and fresh smelling dog leaps up onto the bed (avoiding landing on the cat, or even scaring her in any way) to snuggle a moment, before he leaps back off the bed, goes downstairs and lets himself out through the magical doggy door—the one that is big enough for him to go through, but not big enough to let in burglars and other threatening types.

As he leaves the room, I reach over and pick up my laptop, which has been cured of its annoying display problem and boots up quickly and efficiently. I know through the wonderous new mind-machine invention that there are no important e-mails in any of my 4 e-mail accounts, so I don’t need to attend to any current correpondence from my agent or publicist. The e-mails from my fans will have to wait. I get right to work, with the words of my romance novel pouring out of my fingertips onto the bright white screen before me.

After that successful writing session, I get up, stretch, and exercise. My body enjoys the workout, my heart and muscles are strong and healthy. Next comes a refreshing and relaxing bath, where I read my friend’s recently published, best-selling novel. I finish bath-time with a quick shower-shampoo, after which my hair effortlessly transforms itself into perfect waves. My magically-pressed clothing is handy, and I am able to slip into a comfortable, fashionable outfit and go to lunch with another one of my successful writer friends.

I come home and decide that my afternoon writing session will take place in my lushly flowering, mosquito-free garden. I carry my computer to the specially designed, ergonomic lawn chair and turn my attention to the essays and articles that I have been assigned to write by national magazines. After finishing two or three of them, I quickly send them off to the appropriate editors.

When my husband sees me stretching, that is his cue to bring me a glass of wine, and over a leisurely dinner, we compare notes on the writing that we each accomplished this day, and make plans to join up with several of our writer, artist and musician friends over the weekend, since we know that our writing will flourish the more we are connected and invested with other real, live human beings.

Since there are no magical, cat and dog-hair repelling comforters, nor size-shifting doggy doors, nor self-pressing clothing, and my hair continues to be curly and uncooperative, my real-life perfect writing day obviously doesn’t contain those things. What my real-life perfect writing day does contain is a brain that is free from creativity-blocking anxiety, long expanses of time in which to write things for which I will be paid, broken up with periods of time when I can meet up with my friends for lunch or dinner, a walk along the river with our dogs, or a night out at a play at Dad’s Garage or the Alliance Theater. Although I fight anxiety daily, and there are never really enough hours in the day, particularly if the work is flowing well, I do have the writer-friends, all of whom, to my knowledge, support one another, not envy nor denigrate one another. I am, however, still looking for the wine-glass carrying husband. Please e-mail me about any available candidates.