I might first describe some fanciful writing day. I'd get up at dawn, take the horse for a gallop down to the trout stream, fish for a bit, check on the deer and then return for breakfast at about eight. I'd then retire to my workspace, a converted outhouse at the end of the big field, and settle down.
I'd stay there for an intensive, three-hour stint from nine until mid-day, with no phone-calls, faxes, e-mails or postmen. Noon would be the time to wander back to the house, grill the trout, read the paper and take the dogs (wolfhounds) for a walk up the mountain.
At about two I'd deal with post, faxes, etc., and politely (via my heavy-duty agent) refuse all requests for interviews and readings in awkward places, maybe agreeing to do just a couple, in the US mainly or Rome. The agent would then talk turkey and sort out the details. By three, all the messy stuff is over and it's back to the desk to review the morning's work and tidy it up. If I weren't in writing mode, I might read for an hour or two - time spent at the desk is never wasted - and then knock off about four, have a doze, eat around eight, cheese and wine in the conservatory and bed by eleven. That's about it.
My reality however is somewhat different. I write whenever I get the chance and even then I'm very rarely in the mood for it. Being busy with other more urgent duties is the complaint of any writer who is not full-time. I have constant deadlines with newspapers and definite obligations to radio, so my day must
be planned, first and foremost, around those. Work for which I am contracted and paid must take precedence over any speculative novel-writing or bits of poems.
That of course is the mortgage talking and, at the moment, it talks rather more persuasively than the muse.
Pat McCabe once told me that if I ever actually got to the point where I could devote myself solely to writing then at least I might feel
I'd earned it. Certainly I would love to be able to live a writer's life and have a writer's day but in the meantime I just snatch the time when I have it. I write on the DART and over a sandwich. To actually finish The Little Hammer, I took a week's leave, headed for France and stuck at it for a solid final week: it was the only way I would ever have got the thing done. It's all a matter of time and space. After that comes the minor consideration of actually having something to write about. But I'll worry about that some other time, if I get a moment.
John Kelly's novel The Little Hammer is published by Jonathan Cape