As I know it

. . . the writer's life ain't so glamorous.

But it certainly is rewarding. Here's what it's been like pour moi:

After a Saturday afternoon of rewriting a new chapter, I went to see for the purpose of reviewing the show. Sunday I taught spinning to a real class of live people for the first time and then hauled my ass to the ballet, also for the purpose of reviewing the show.

After procrastinating by watching 60 Minutes and Cold Case featuring all U2 songs and washing my kitchen floor and cabinets, I went to bed at midnight, woke up at 3, spanked out the  two reviews by 6, went to the gym and spun for an hour, held office hours at a coffee shop and graded papers, took care of some business at the office--including booking my trip to Paris(!)--, spent the afternoon working and reworking the third draft of that now newish chapter and the first act of my old screenplay, prepared them for submission to a competition, went to my narrative theory class and bluffed my way through it, came home and got ready for the next day.
 
I'm learning what a deliberate writing practice takes for me.  I've always had some talent, whatever the hell that is, which has meant I can consistently write quickly and relatively cleanly and I work well under pressure.  But I've allowed myself to get away with dashing things off.  Now I'm getting into spending hours at a stretch revising a couple of pages.  Really working through my own material.  It's good.  I can do this writer's life thing.  I like to work at a coffee shop--it helps ease the isolation.  I don't know if writing for a living is my aim after all.  Perhaps.  Teaching seems to be a good balance.  It would be nice to have the option to live off my writing, though.  Get a place in the West of Ireland near a cliff, surround myself with animals and a big garden, have a pub where I can end my long days of writing, spend a few months out of the year teaching in Dublin.  Or Paris.  Or Sarajevo.

I suspect I'll always desire a kind of split life.  I crave a solitary existence, but I can also be intensely extroverted--on my own terms.  I'm city mouse and country mouse rolled into one, and I like it that way.