Week What-ever

It’s all back to normal here after the excitement of Saudi. The calendar is looking pretty blank and to be honest I’ve no idea whether this is week, 14 15 or 27.  I need to get out more.

My one night a week at the local pub quiz has now been curtailed due to the teenager’s new job. Her evening shift finishes during the second round.  As I elected to become a full-time housewife, or “stay at home mom” as it is referred to in the US, I can hardly reneged on my motherly duties.  I chose to be a stay at home mom so now I have to stay at home so I can pick her up. I have no-one but myself to blame.

Perhaps the time has finally come to return to work myself - meet some new people and spice up my social life. I didn't want to look for work when we first returned to the UK  because (a)  I wanted to have time to dedicate myself to writing a book, and (b) I wanted to be at home when my husband was - darling if I was at work all day you'd never see me on your two weeks leave.

As for my book,  that potential bestseller chronicalling amusing anecdotes from our time in America – progress is slow. Part of the preparation for this book involved enrolling on my creative writing course –  from which I have subsequently learned that writing something creative, amusing and marketable is not such an easy combination as it sounds. I am now having serious doubts about my ability to write anything, let alone the lightweight chick-lit I have fantasies about or the standard formula short story my creative writing teacher insists is the easiest way to commercial success. 

It's a crisis of self-doubt and now I'm  older and a lot wiser about all things literary I realise I should have made the most of my LA Bubble blog when I had the chance – promoted it simultaneously on several websites instead of just the one, sold advertising space, commented on other people’s blogs simply to get my own noticed and snapped up by some major publishing house with the minimum effort. I’ve missed the boat. Writing 500 words at a time on the idiosyncracies of American life came easy – a saleable book I’m told has to have 80,000 words. There’s a huge difference.

However, I owe it to myself to fulfil my potential  and write that bloody book even if it kills me, because if I don’t do it now, I never will.  I do have lots of time – when the teenager cries out ‘don’t you dare tidy my room!’ I should see it not as a hindrance to, but as a reprieve from, my housewifely duties. Back to the study and soldier on!