“Besides writing, what do you do all day?”

“Besides writing, what do you do all day?” That was the question I was asked by a friend recently.

My motor mouth choked and stalled. Since I’m a writer after all, I jumpstarted in time to quip, “Uh, um, I do other stuff.” 

“Like what?” she asked.

“Um, laundry, eat, rearrange furniture, read.” I gave her a look. “Invite people over for supper, people who give me grief.”

“Hmm. That all?”

“Perhaps you don’t realize that writing takes a big chunk out of my every day. For instance, this morning I renamed three characters in my current work in progress. ‘Search and replace’ can be tricky if you’re not careful. I also added realism and depth to their personas by giving one an allergy to gluten-FREE food, another an irrational fear of chipmunks, and the third a verbal tic, which caused her to yell, ‘The British are coming!’ whenever a situation got tense. I also switched from first person point of view to third person point of view, which meant I had to change out all the pronouns. Phew! That took some time.

“I then adjusted the motivations behind my characters’ behavior, so I had to change their actions to reflect their more advanced motivations. I came up with varied histories of emotional trauma, which meant, obviously, that I had to change their reactions. I also gave each of them an individual fashion style, which forced me to change the time of the year to match their outfits. Initially, I had switched the setting, but decided I didn’t know enough about dude ranches in Wyoming to make my story believable. Besides, the cost of flying there to do research was prohibitive. In the end, I moved my characters one town over from where I live in New Hampshire because I can safely drive there without getting lost.”

“Oh.” She yawned. “When are we gonna have supper?”