Fifteen years ago, a coworker pushed into my softly-lit office one Monday morning and settled herself in one of the two chairs on the opposite side of my desk. I knew she was irritated by her body language and the way she sat on the edge of the chair, as if preparing to leap across and tear out my throat.
I didn’t like overhead lights, so they were off, and the room was lit only by two standing lamps and a green one on my desk.
“It’s too dark in here.” She pursed her lips like the SNL church lady. “This doesn’t look like an office.”
My first thought that I somehow held back was, Your mouth looks like a cat’s ass.
“It does too.” (I wonder if I meant her mouth, or the office.) Here’s a desk. There’s a computer, and I have an electric pencil sharpener. It’s a real workspace.”
“You know what I mean.”
You don’t know what I meant, though. Then I spoke aloud. “I thought I did.”
She got right to the point. “So just what do you do all day?” She hammered that word hard.
My puckered visitor was a director in another department, and apparently didn’t like the fact that I was behind my desk late one morning, pounding on my computer keyboard, instead of sitting in some other inane meeting like the one she’d just left.
I also knew she was miffed because I’d refused to attend her “mandatory” 4:00 PM meeting the previous Friday afternoon. In my opinion, the meeting was only a way to flex her administrative muscles over those who worked under her so they couldn’t go home until 6:00.
I was the Director of Communications and crisis management for the then tenth largest school district in Texas. We had 7,500 employees and 56,000 kids, and someone was messing up every single day.
Considering her question about my work ethic, I leaned back and propped my feet on my desk for emphasis. “What I do all day is exactly what I was doing when you rolled in.”
“And what’s that?”
“Keeping your people out of trouble and dealing with the media. Your people need direction that your coordinators aren’t providing, and since I’ve been in this business for almost thirty-five years, I have a little experience in crisis management to handle these issues so they won’t wind up on the shoulders of your building administrators where they can’t do their job.”
She glared. “You look like you’re just sitting there, twiddling your thumbs every time I go by, and you’re always on the phone. It never looks like you’re doing anything.”
“That’s because I’m good at my job. Looks easy, don’t it?”
“I think you make it appear like you’re working.”
“Okay.” As a visual aid, I reached over and sharpened a pencil. She stomped out and though we’re still “friends,” that day has never come back up in conversation.
Our little exchange came back not too long ago in a writing workshop when a young lady raised her hand when I asked for questions.
“So now that you’re an author, what do you do all day?”
“I sit behind a desk, or sometimes on the couch, or on the bed, or on a table-cum-desk at our cabin and think a lot of the time. Then I pound on the keyboard, making stuff up.”
“So you write all day?”
“Some days. But I don’t always look like I’m working. Sometimes I read, or look out the window. When I lean back and close my eyes, story lines, bits of dialogue, and descriptions roll past. Sometimes I watch TV. Writers are always thinking, so sometimes I have to pause the movie or program to take a note or two. They sometimes trigger a bit of dialogue, or a plot line, or even an idea for my weekly newspaper columns.”
“Isn’t that stealing?”
“Nope, according to academics, there are only seven basic storytelling plots that we all re-work, though a couple of overachievers say there might be as many as thirty. The basics are overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, rebirth, comedy, and tragedy. We all just build those same stories and do it in our voice.”
“Can your wife tell you’re working?”
“Why, have you been talking to her? Did she say something?”
Thankfully the conversation moved on.
I’m always working, though there are times when this author’s mind needs some relief. There are days when words flow from a firehose, but at other times I run into hills and the pace slows as I struggle to the top. Good or bad, my mind wanders. I suffer distractions.
Squirrel!
After 37 years, I still write a weekly newspaper column that allows me to go in an entirely different direction in my writing. Changing lanes freshens my mind, and the little 900-word stories get me onto a different track.
There are other times, though, when I write a scene and need details I haven’t seen or experienced for myself. That leads to the Google and The Rabbit Hole. It isn’t a bad thing. As I research, or surf, I find ideas, stories, and anecdotes that make their way into my plot. But as all writers can tell you, it’s a huge time-suck that can impact your page or word count for that day.
But I’m still working, though I might not look like it.
Sometimes I need to put myself in that place. That’s when I watch a movie set in the period I’m working on, looking for details that might not have occurred to me.
I also feel guilty most of the time. I want to write, but at the same time, I really want to read whatever is in my TBR pile. That’s where books come in. For example, I’m working on my fifth western at this writing and needed some real cowboy lingo. While the Bride and I were in Alpine, Texas, for their annual Art Walk back in November, she found me a copy of We Pointed Them North, by Teddy Blue. That book is an encyclopedia of the cowboy way of life.
Within those pages he once referred to himself as a cow catcher, instead of cowboy. That went into the manuscript. He also explained the origin of cow puncher. When a cattle drive was over and they finally got the herd to the railroad, the stock had to be loaded onto the cars. To get the cattle moving, the boys used long poles to punch them in the rear end, forcing them forward to make room for more.
Who knew?
So just what do authors do all day?
We noodle around on the internet, make things up, daydream, stare out the window–––
Squirrel!
––– find things to do in order not to work, read, think, stare out the window some more, and sometimes attend conferences where we interact with others, thereby finding inspiration to string words together when we get home, hopefully choosing the ones that carry readers along with us on the fictional journey created in our minds. Then we write.
Yeah, lady, I was working then, and now, but sometimes you just can’t tell it.
Shalah Kennedy has dreams of becoming a senior travel advisor—one who actually gets to travel. Her big break comes when the agency’s “Golden Girl” is hospitalized and Shalah is sent on a Danube River cruise in her place. She’s the only advisor in the agency with a knowledge of photography, and she’s determined to get stunning images for the agency’s website.
Like bang for your buck? I have a 
