On The Move

This week, which is just two weeks off my delivery deadline, my husband is going for some kind of health care world record with three hospital visits in as many days. Which require my attendance.

Some writers can work anywhere. Actually, I have writer friends who can’t stop writing, no matter how distracting or adverse the conditions. Beside a swimming pool, at a restaurant table, or the Ryanair steerage-class boarding gate, the A4 pad is always to hand. Not me.

There are certain types of work I can just about manage away from my desk. Copy-editing, maybe a little light journalism, but nothing substantial. I think the reason is I’m too easily tempted by alternatives. I’d rather eavesdrop and watch the passing parade. It isn’t time wasted, exactly. Hospital waiting rooms are full of life’s interesting mis-shapes and bizarre conversations.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I knew that ham was off. And of course Michael’s in Lanzarote.’  

Who’s to say that slice of life might not come in handy some day? But this morning, with a hundred or so unsatisfactory pages still needing a good hair cut, I could certainly have been more profitably employed. Ah well. We must each of us work with the cloth we’re given. Laurie Graham, novelist, nosy-parker, and deliverer of bromides.

1 Comment

  1. Janneke Budding on November 13, 2012 at 4:26 am

    Snap! My (emergency) stay in an English hospital was a very special nosy-parkerish experience for me, a Dutch teacher of English. The first word I learned during the first five minutes on the ward was ”the mo’. Strangely enough, I hadn’t come across that one during my studies 😉

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