ugly work still counts

easter bank holidays, the importance of rest, and the minor breakdown of routines

Some weeks I get to describe my writing routines and daily life in ways that I hope are entertaining and maybe even inspirational. This is not one of those weeks. This is a week when the pretty aesthetics got sacrificed. But the work got done anyway. And that’s all that matters, in the end.

And maybe this can be it’s sort of inspiration. Even when doing the work is ugly, when the routines break down, when it’s a struggle to get words on the page, the work is still worth doing. The writing finds a way.

Monday

Easter Monday. The pope is dead.

We’re down at my partner’s parents in Donegal for the Easter holidays. I’m in the kitchen, microwaving porridge. My partner’s dad has an old school radio mounted the bottom of the cabinet near the sink, the kind with a little bit of grain to the audio. It’s tuned to RTE, there’s a couple of guys talking about the Catholic Church and I’m not paying much attention.

Then one of them says “Do you think he knew?” Do you think he knew he was saying goodbye yesterday at the Easter Mass in St Peter’s square?

Is the pope dead?

The microwave dings. The coffee maker is finished. I add oat milk to my coffee, honey to my porridge. Sit down at the kitchen table. Open RTE on my phone.

The pope is dead.

I’m not Catholic and my parent is probably more culturally Catholic than anything. Not the type to be sad about the passing of the pope. But it’s still the main topic of conversation today.

this is pretty emblematic of how I spent my Easter holidays

Tuesday

I’m getting old. Sleeping in is no longer a pleasure, it leaves me groggy and with a headache. Not sleeping in my own bed doesn’t help. We’re still down in Donegal. I’ve been informed that it’s not officially a bank holiday, but nearly everyone in Northern Ireland has the day off so it’s effectively a bank holiday.

The coffee helps a little. The good book and the fact of a bank holiday with no obligations helps more. My partner leaves for a long cycle and I curl up in the overstuffed armchair on the porch and read.

To be honest, sleeping in has never been pleasant. I have throughly swallowed what my mother said about missing the best part of the day. Sleeping in always makes me feel behind.

Neither of these days are writing days, at least not in the formal sense. I didn’t even bring my computer with me.

But in the informal sense, the importance of days off and rest manifests itself in a fresh bucket of ideas. I jot down a plot point that’ll make one short story brilliant. During a family excursion, cutting through farmer’s fields that my partner and his siblings have been cutting through since they were children, hiking halfway up a mountain through deep, dark woods, someone says one sentence that inspires a whole new story.

This is a cool moment. I can feel the writing muscles, strengthened with practice over the years, knowing what to do with this first line. Knowing how to build a whole story out of this moment of inspiration.

Wednesday

I feel off today. The same way I feel coming back from any long holiday weekend. Off kilter and overwhelmed. I always overestimate the amount I can get done. But that doesn’t stop me from stacking tasks on top of each other the first day back from something.

Go for a walk, run a couple of errands. Do some non-writing related work in the early afternoon.

After all that, I have an hour before my Pilates class at 18.30. I’ve budgeted this for writing time. In order to hit 80k by the end of May, I need to write 1247 words today. It’s difficult to express how much in this moment I don’t want to do this. I wonder about doing the math again, redistributing those 1247 words over the course of the next 30 days. Let it be tomorrow’s problem.

Sometimes writing looks like tapping about barely 100 words, watching a couple of Instagram reels, then tapping about a few more. It’s not pretty but it works. Eventually, I stop picking up my phone between paragraphs.

I write 1255 words.

Thursday

Today is not one of those aesthetic mornings that would make a good “a morning in the life of a writer” video. I should be getting up after finishing my coffee. Get out of the chair. Make breakfast. Eat breakfast. Go for a walk. Make tea. Sit down to write.

Instead, I doomscroll until I’m behind on everything.

And this is what I mean about as long as the work gets done, that’s enough for some weeks. I’m not entirely sure what inspires it, but at some point I get sick of doomscrolling and get out of the chair. Relieve myself of the pressure of doing everything and just start a load of laundry. Put a hair mask in. Sit down at my desk. Get to work.

I write another 1200 words on the novel. Not much else gets done today, but that doesn’t matter. Not this week.

Friday

It shouldn’t take all morning to do a handful of chores and one Pilates routine. To shower and put myself together. To head into town. But it does. It’s just that sort of end to the week, the kind where I’m tried and my body feels heavy, dragging it through the day.

I probably care too much about aesthetics. I like pretty things. A nice cup of coffee. An outfit that hangs just right on my body. The perfect words coming together, bonus points if they’re written on the kind of notebook that looks good in an Instagram post.

But after an unaesthetic morning, I get my little moment. My perfect oat latte on a wooden table. The click of the keys on my keyboard. The ambiance of working in a coffee shop.

I write the newsletter. Make a few light edits on a short story and submit it to a couple of literary magazines. Write a few more words on the first draft of my novel.

And finally, it’s the weekend.