For freelancers like me weekends don’t exist. It’s Friday and we’re all meant to be getting excited about getting two days off to do whatever we please (which inevitably means cleaning the house/apartment/shed/car/cat/dog/gun/whatever.)
For the last four years or so, I’ve been fulltime freelancing and rarely can I take a weekend off. Not that I’m complaining – when you make your own work, you can never complain about being busy. I’d like to take weekends off, but writing books, articles and comics isn’t like building shelves – you can’t just plug in your power tools and get to work. Sometimes there’s no juice for the tools to work. Somedays you just can’t get anything accomplished – that internal editor rules over you and you stare at a blank page/screen all day. As Monday slips into Friday, you’re suddenly faced with a weekend where everyone else has plans, is going places and your stuck inside working.
That’s what I’m facing this weekend, but I don’t mind. I’ll be revisiting two of my favourite characters: Oxford and Pearl – a ‘you-solve-it’ detective duo for the younger set. It’s for a story that will appear in the summer issue of ChickaDEE magazine, for kids age 5 to 8. Oxford and Pearl appeared in the Jan/Feb 05 issue of ChickaDEE, and I’m excited to see what trouble they can get into this time around.
I may be working this Saturday and Sunday, but at least I’ll be with old friends and that’s always a good way to spend a weekend.
tagged: [writing] [freelancing] [weekends]
