i write on fridays.
A reflection on scheduling and shifting my relationship with publishing.
Thank you for joining me in the Inner Parlour today. This is a subsection of my newsletter, Lilith’s Muse, where we’ll have deeper conversations in a smaller setting. So please, take a seat by the fire. You are in good company here.
In the future, I hope to use this space as an open dialogue. We’ll do Q+As, structured like a writing/publishing advice column. If you’d like to send in a question to get us started, feel free to reach out in the comments, or send an email to fromlilithsmuse@gmail.com. I’ll answer in a future newsletter post with a long-form letter like this one!
I write on Fridays now. Now that I’m in grad school, I have classes Monday through Thursday, and enough reading material and essays to require I spend most of my free time on those days doing my schoolwork. Weekends are for socializing—I wish I was the sort of person who could forgo going out for drinks, or coffees, or having dinners or lazing about at other people’s apartments and going on random adventures (my wallet would certainly be grateful for it) but unfortunately God shaped me into an insufferable extrovert, so here I am. I write on Fridays.
Come rain or shine, like the postal service. If it’s a truly ugly day, I’ll stay in my apartment, cozy under a blanket with only the snacks I have on-hand in my pantry to keep my hands going on the keys. On better days—of which there have been few, lately—I venture out into the city, in search of cafes and bookstores with tables near windows, libraries and nooks and crannies, where I can get work done. But the weather has been such an unforgivable bitch lately that I’ve had to leave my house with an umbrella just to inhale some fresh (moist or damp would be better adjectives here, honestly) air.
I also write on Fridays because it’s the only portion of my life that, presently, makes sense to dedicate to writing.