Not So Good Housekeeping

The kids are napping. I just made spaghetti sauce for dinner, cleaned the kitchen (halfheartedly), and folded laundry. (I'll be honest: my mom was over this morning and she folded about three quarters of the laundry, which I had artfully scattered around the living room in a pitiful attempt to get her to feel sorry for me and do it. It worked.)

I don't mind cooking, but I'm not great with housework.

I have an excuse, though! I'm a writer, and a freelance one at that. In the time it takes me to clean the house, I always tell my husband, I could write an entire article. It just doesn't make sense for me to clean for hours when we can hire someone to do the entire house for a fraction of what I charge for an article. (Sadly, that theory didn't really wash when I was writing the novel and we were paying someone to clean the house and take care of the kids a few mornings a week while I sat and wrote something I wasn't getting paid for. I unsucessfully tried to sell it as one of those Mastercard commercial vignette's:
A clean house: $60 plus tip
Occupied children: $13 per hour
A happy writer working on her first novel, unshowered and still in her pajamas .... priceless.)

I do wish I had a clean house, even if, as L.M. Montgomery might have written, clean houses provide less scope for the imagination. I also wish I were a perfect housekeeper, mother, and wife. I wish I could be the kind of mom who is more than happy, when her little darlings go off to dreamland, to scour the floor of harmful bacteria they might pick up as they crawl, bake them organic, whole grain, carob chip goodies, and plan a craft for when they wake up that's more inventive than slopping glue on a piece of paper and dumping dried chickpeas on top of the glue. (It's bean art! Lovely!)

Instead, the second the kids go to sleep, I throw the lunch dishes in the dishwasher, turn on CBC Radio 2, power up my laptop, and start to write.

Sometimes, I write emails. Sometimes, like today, I write blog posts. Sometimes, I write fiction. And sometimes, I actually write those paid articles I use as the excuse for being such a slattern.

I wondered if there were other writers out there like me, so I typed "writers don't clean the house" into Google.

On the first hit, a writer's blog, the writer was talking about how fabulously clean her house is when she has writer's block. "I know I'm not the only writer," writes Merrilee Faber, "who rushes to do the dishes and mop the floor when their subconscious is conspiring against them."

Um, uh oh.

Am I the only writer who, when I have writer's block, makes a cup of tea and reads a really good book? Or emails a friend a longwinded missive she doesn't bother to spell check? Merrilee was making me feel bad, until I continued reading her post: "Today my house is a vile pit of filth and disease, suitable only as a rancor den (but without the tastefully scattered bones)."

Ah, that's better. Mine, too.

xo Marissa