author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So yesterday I laid out my schedule for Monday through Thursday. What about Friday, you may ask? Well, Friday is a day off. I started to jot that down in yesterday's post, but it soon became clear that I have a whole 'nother post in me purely on the philosophy of "Yes, I do get to have days off" and I should probably save that tangent for tomorrow.

Welp, now it's tomorrow.

Here's the thing about Friday: It's full of things. It starts off bright and early with recording a couple shows for AINC, the Spanish-language programming this time. One of 'em has to be uploaded for noon, but I will not be at home for noon, because I've got my Boulder Food Rescue shift from about 10:45 AM until 1:00 PM or so. And then there's whatever groceries need getting at whatever stores. And then I am tired, so by the time I'm home and have put all the groceries away, it's nap time, like seriously, and I am not very good at getting up from a nap and being productive. Pretty much the whole day is shot for further productivity.

This is a thing which has given me angst and guilt over the past few years. I've whittled down my Friday expectations from a full day to a half day to just 25 minutes of freewriting, come one, can't I at least do that? No? Well, then, I guess I'm just a lazy good-for-nothing so-n-so who isn't really a writer.

In fact, no. Obviously what I need to do is just stop expecting writing to happen on Fridays.

It sounds obvious, yes, but deciding that is sort of kind of a breakthrough. And it flies in the face of the internalized Wise Writing Mentor voice that says, "Being a writer means having homework every day for the rest of your life. Being a writer means you don't get weekends and holidays." And whoever thought those were reasonable things to say?

(I honestly don't remember. I want to pin it on that panel at World Horror Convention 2002 that was Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe in conversation, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing Neil Gaiman would say or co-sign. My impression of him has always been that he's far too kind to do the "You must do X to be a real writer" schtick. It might have been one of my instructors at Viable Paradise in 2006, maybe Jim Macdonald, but if so, only after he emphatically reminded us that "Under the right circumstances anything I tell you can be wrong." Because, again, I don't see Uncle Jim as insisting on Only One Right Way to Be a Writer, no matter how strongly he feels that a short story is a key lime pie.)

Anyway, I damn well get Fridays off. I also get Sundays off, because they, too, start with 1. AINC reading (the Sunday edition of the Employment Opportunity News this time), 2. roller derby practice, and then 3. a very hard nap. They may also, depending on schedules, transition into Quality Family Time. But despite the lovely writing date that SFWA schedules for every Sunday afternoon with rotating author and editor hosts, Sundays very rarely involve writing.

And accepting that no writing will meaningfully get done on Friday or Sunday, and therefore not guilting myself over that writing not getting done, is part of my Write Happier in 2022 initiative.

But what about the Friday Fictionette? You may well ask. And I will tell you. Here's the plan: I upload that sucker by Thursday, and I schedule it to automatically go live on Friday at 8:00 AM. No actual work on Friday required. Ta-daaa!

But what, you may then ask, what about Weekend Warrior, whose prompt goes live on Friday and whose deadline is Sunday night? If you take Friday and Sunday off, when will you write your Weekend Warrior stories? ...Well, I guess that's what Saturday's for, isn't it?! Sheesh.