Writers are often asked: “What’s your daily process?”
I assume this is because many people entertain the outlandish fantasy that most writers wake up late, stare philosophically into the middle distance for an hour or two, do about twenty minutes of actual work and then spend the rest of the day hanging out in opium dens. I’d like to take a few moments to dispel these fallacies by offering a very rare and personal glimpse into my daily life as a New York Limes Best Smelling author.
8:62AM
START WITH A HEALTHY BREAKFAST
In my teenage years I began most mornings with a cup of Slurm or ambrosia alongside a large serving of fried unicorn. These days I’m trying to watch my figure (watch it EXPAND amirite?) so I stick to a nice cockatrice omelette. It’s important for me to use free range eggs, sadly in 2015 many farmers still engage in the barbaric practice of battery caging cockatrices. If you have allergies to cockatrice eggs you can substitute dragon or phoenix, but these tend to be a little pricier.
ELEVENTY-SIX AM
IDEAS
Next I have to get some ideas. Writers are often asked ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ and there are a range of sources, but I like to keep things simple. I use the classic monkeys at typewriters technique. The smell and noise can be annoying but it’s worth it. The recommended quantity is 100, but I don’t shift as many units as James Patterson (word on the street is that he has an international conglomerate of monkeys working for him) so I can only afford 43. Also, due to a purchasing error, I only have pygmy marmosets and they have to jump from one key to the next, so typing a whole book takes a really long time.
13th:23rd PM
SOCIAL MEDIUM TIME
Often young aspiring writers ask me how much time you should ideally spend on social media, usually while they are tweeting from their phone and scrolling through instagram on their iPad. My reply is usually ‘Hey, do you mind? Are you familiar with the concept of eye contact?’ and then I tell them that social media is an important tool for tracking idiotic things that Jonathan Franzen has said recently, but what you really want to invest your time in is a social MEDIUM. The use of a psychic to spruik your books in the land of the dead is very important. The dead don’t really have much to do except bitch about each other, so they’re always hungry for reading material, plus their population is huge (and growing by the day!) so they’re an important market to tap into.
33 1/3rd PM SNACK BREAK!
Usually around this time I feel my motivation lagging and I need to perk myself up. I like to achieve this by enjoying my favourite beverage: The Tears of My Enemies. When I was a young rookie I had to collect these the old fashioned way, with baseball bats and threats. This obviously took a lot of time. Nowadays my schedule’s pretty crowded, so I use a tears exchange program. My tears are sent out to a central agency who in turn provide me with the requested tears. I’m not sure where mine are sent, because it’s an anonymous program, but Christopher Pyne has been throwing a lot of shade at me via twitter recently.
FOR PM
Yell at the walls.
Practise De Niro’s monologue from Taxi Driver.
Attempt to balance a spoon on my nose.
MIDNIGHT O’CLOCK
Get a good night’s sleep. Resting is important for a healthy mind and body. Unfortunately, all of the people I’ve wronged/maimed/imprisoned in magical cages over the years weigh very heavily on my soul, so the only way I can sleep is on a pile of money. Even more unfortunately, I am pretty broke, so I have to sleep on a pile of monopoly money.
BOOK O’CLOCK!!!
When the magic’s all done and the book is finally complete, I have a really hard time waiting, so I like to cryogenically freeze myself until the night of the launch. This allows me to emerge from my stasis chamber to a round of applause. A word of caution though, I did once overset the timer and my publisher had to hire a model who was much better looking than me and, embarrassingly, was also a lot wittier and more intelligent. I think he’s just signed a six book deal with a Penguin. Not Penguin publishing, just a penguin named Steve.