Oh my, doesn't that title sound all romance-y and idealistic? Does it conjure up images of a perfectly groomed office and a woman in a fur-lined robe, madly typing away all day long, no cares in the world, eating boxes of perfectly packaged gourmet bon-bons whilst classical music wafts in an inspirational manner in the background?

So, here's the real day in the life of a procrastinating wannabe romance novelist.

Woke up to a cat grooming my head. Do you know what that weird kitty tongue does to hair? It pulls each individual strand, one at a time. Dammit, it's Saturday and I'm up before 7.

Kitty leads me to the fresh puke on the floor. Stares at me with a glint in her eye and then returns to bed where she promptly falls asleep. I am, unfortunately, wide awake. Snores from hubby emanate from the bedroom. Fabulous. Time for breakfast.

Yippee, Saturday. Sure, I'm on call, but there'll be plenty of time to get lots of writing done, right?

2 hours of my life, gone. Apparently the internet has taken me from Twitter to cute puppies to ASPCA videos to pitiful animals to news articles about animal cruelty. I'm mad about the pitiful animals, but haven't accomplished much more than wanting to get another pound kitty.

All right, after I check the Twitter feed, I'll be ready to write.

1.5 more hours later have elapsed. It's like I was in a coma. There are no memories of this time. Perhaps aliens have abducted me.

Even though I'm still in jammies, it's now time for lunch. Yes, in jammies. At some point, I should brush my teeth.

Out of jammies, finally. On treadmill, with freshly-brushed teeth, watching Game of Thrones. I'm going to say it: there are some really high quality abs, pectoralis muscles, and…other anatomical parts on these episodes. Walking faster through those aforementioned high-quality segments of the show.

After a shower, I'm ready to sit down and do some writing for the afternoon.

Until phone rings and emergency c-section ensues.

Dear lordie, that gal was 300 pounds and shaped like a sphere! I pulled an armpit muscle trying to get baby out of her pelvis. And the uterine repair was an adventure. Now all I can think about is wound healing, bleeding, and secondary infection, since her sub-q space (adipose layer) was 5-6 inches thick. That's a lot of space to have stuff go wrong. Dadgum.

Need a shower again. Between working hard and getting flop sweat when I couldn't get the uterus back into the abdomen for a minute there, and for the benefit of humanity, another shower is in order.

On a whim, hubby and I go out to eat and invite colleague and his wife to join us.

Colleague (old enough to be my father, by the way) proceeds to drink all of us under the table. I'm impressed. And thankful he's not on call. He apparently likes to say the word "cock" out of context and loudly. It's a small town. At least 3 patients I know look over at our table. I'll be hearing about this come Monday.

Back home a few hours later. Time to really REALLY work on writing. After checking Twitter and email first, that is.

Seriously, am I in some kind of time warp? It's already 10 pm? What the heck happened? Well, can't start writing now. I'm tired.

But there is time to do this blog about a day in the life of a (non writing) romance novelist….

So I got my edits back for Hell to Pay. Huzzah!

So I'm at a conference about physician leadership and the business of medicine. Huzzah!

Uh oh. No huzzah….

See, these two activities will not coexist in my head without something crossing over to the dark side to relieve pressure before the entire cranium explodes. I cannot sit through Death By Powerpoint without editing the stinkin' slides in my head. Or continuing to develop better ways to "spruce up" the presentation language. For example, "Physician engagement in management decisions" really should be "Driving a stake deep into the heart of the evil overload of administration…." And "payment incentives based on outcomes data" should really be "in a macabre effort to flay the humanity from every physician, the diabolical management machine has created unattainable quests, knowing that the physician will perish of thirst before crossing the ever-enlarging desert of reimbursement". (enter maniacal laughing and a "buwahaha" and you have what goes on in my head all day long)

I won't even comment about how I'm editing the book's sex scenes during this conference. All I can say is what I'm doing while innocuously tapping out notes on the computer should not count as CME (continuing medical education). Well, unless the characters were to pick up, say, trichomonas, from said activity. And then require treatment. But then they have the wrong insurance and have to pay out of network fees and then spiral into a larger exposition about how the entire health care system failed them by not providing appropriate education and how they now cannot get married due to having to spend all that money on deductables. In that case, then yup, here are my credit hours, AAFP.

It's a little like Clark Kent by day, having pleasant conversations with pleasant colleagues over coffee, chitchatting about various medical practice models and how we're all moving into a new paradigm of physician leadership and pay for performance. Then the conference day ends and boom, into the phone booth, and bingo bango, you've got a slobbering romance writer. Suddenly the hair is in a Pebbles 'do on the top of my head and I'm in ill-fitting jammies and I've got Word loaded up faster than you can say "misplaced modifier". 

It's true. The superman concept is a poor analogy on account of #1) I'm not a dude #2) no one wants to see me change in a phone booth (NO ONE, trust me) and #3) there's that whole thing about me not being able to fly, but those are mere details.

Can't wait to see how I morph tomorrow's topic of "contract negotiation and physician retention" into something truly naughty….

0400 Call from Ob department. Patient in labor. Check.

0400-0600 Cannot fall asleep, so laying in bed, calculating time of delivery for a typical G2P1 at a rate of 1 cm/hour average dilation. Between calculations, mentally edit Dante's Inferno.

0630 In hospital checking on said patient. Pooh, she's only 3 cm. Going to be a long day.

0730 First patient in office. Office staff excited patient is in labor and crams all AM patients to be seen prior to 1000. "Just in case."

1015 Pooped from double booked morning patients, catching up on notes with my free time. Patient 5 cm. Sweet, I have 5 hours until delivery at this rate!

1030 Get Twitter followers for my Twitterverse. Cannot respond as I am at work-work. In between office notes, jot down a few extra POV details to buff up Dante's Inferno. Pray that there will be a week to work on it before Crimson wants me to overhaul Hell to Pay.

1115 Ultrasound demo. Enlist 15 week pregnant office staff and 22 week receptionist's daughter to act as guinea pigs. Get gel all over the place. See cute, wiggly babies, and everyone's happy.

1200 Call from Ob department. Patient is completely dilated and feels like she "has to poo."

1230 Deliver handsome baby boy, prepare to return to office

1232-1315 Postpartum hemorrhage, spend the majority of time in the bimanual massage position, clamping down on uterus and praying while drugs are being run. Look down and realize that my large scrub top is gaping and I'm flashing the entire family. Look down and realize there is really nothing there…to flash...

1330-1600 Right forearm/deltoid twitching from aforementioned hemorrhage maneuver. Training on new electronic medical record (EMR) update. Apparently, the system is so bad, we need a 3 hour course in it. Daydream about having some free time to sit down and edit edit.

1615 Sign off phone notes and refills that cannot wait 'til tomorrow. Home to treadmill.

1630-1730 Hugh Jackman, you brawny Wolverine of a man, you do know how to make a girl walk faster!

1800 Best hubby in the whole world cooks up a mess of squash, homemade mashed potatoes, and shrimp. 

1900 Pack for physician leadership conference in 2 days. Me attempting to mix and match clothes is like a monkey doing a math problem.

2000 Download more contest feedback and collate into files to take to conference. Yes, the plan is to do conference work in the daytime and writing work in the evenings. At least I won't be on call. It'll be a luxury.

2100 Jot down more notes for Dante's Inferno and start to get excited. Snuggle with kitty in a lascivious manner and prepare for a lovely night's sleep.

2101 Call from Ob department. Patient in labor. Check.     

You'd think being on a boat in the hinterlands of Alaska without any internet or cell phone access would be a good thing, right? Ok, it was, to a point.

The first two days of the ten day trip, I slept nearly 12 hours/day, thanks to every one of my Ob patients within 5 weeks of their due date dropping into labor and delivery within 72 hours of my departure on said vacation. I haven't had a nasty slog of sleeplessness and emergencies like that since fellowship. Yee haw. Mind you, this is a critical access (rural) hospital. We don't normally see big floods of patients or weird stuff. Emergency c-section? Check. Tachypneic 35 week baby on oxygen, requiring gavage feedings? Check. Shoulder dystocia? Check. Placental abruption? Check. And those were just my own patients, to say nothing of the flaming insanity flowing amongst my colleagues. Could someone tell me what spectacular, sex-inducing event occurred 9 months ago because I clearly missed the memo.

So phew, back to the boat. Yay, no communication. No calls, no emails. Fabulous. On a whim, I linked up to a virus-ridden hot spot in Juneau and….#1) full request #2) contest finalist #3) contest finalist but not winner #4) publication offer. WHAT??!? Hold the all-you-can-eat buffet, Mildred! Yup, offer.

So I'm like, yippie. Of course. And then I'm like, uh oh. Uh. Oh. What do I do now? Well, thank and accept of course, but I've heard there are etiquette things you have to do first. And my spreadsheet of queries, partials and fulls is….2000 miles away. So I ask for time to get back to terra firma a la mi casa, Then I frantically type a note to a lovely editor who has been instrumental in helping me with the novels. (She's also an acquiring editor for stuff I don't write, but she knows the business.) And I said something pithy and erudite like: HELLLLPPPPPPP!!!!

Back home Sunday afternoon, hubby kindly did 3 suitcases' worth of laundry while I tried to formulate an enthusiastic (who wouldn't be?), polite and professional reply to the executive editor who graciously offered publication. I then emailed the folks who were reading fulls and partials, hoping I was doing the right thing, and cringed each time I hit SEND. 

Monday morning. Sports/school physical forms, prior authorizations, oxygen certifications, meeting requests (yuck) and double booked patients awaited me. Normally that's plenty. But interspersed throughout the day were all the writing stuff emails to which I needed to promptly respond. I generally only do doctor work at work and writing work at home. Not today. Can't wait for the IT folks to pull up my profile and be like "Dr. Jill's surfing smut." And there's the trip to the CEO's office. Again. WAH Wah waaaahhhhh.

No idea where this adventure will take me, but I can say with confidence that I have no patients due for 4 weeks, and that means...free time to edit!!! Fingers crossed for making the right decisions for the writing future….

That's not to say it's been a bad month. Just very long. Like 5 c-sections, 7 vaginal deliveries (only 2 in the daytime, thank you for that, my sadistic little vampire babies), way too many scopes, and just a lot of the usual mess of stuff on my desk. That kind of long. Like when the phone rang after midnight last night, I started thinking bad words in my head. (But you know the rule, right? NEVER ever say those bad words to the nurses. They are making my life better by being awake all night, taking care of patients so I don't have to drag my lumpy butt to the hospital. And if there are nurses out there -- you know the gig: Crummy interactions with grumpy doctor = q1 hour phone calls until she cries uncle. Proud to say that's never happened to me, but I've seen it with colleagues.)

So the last thing I've wanted to do this month is edit, but slow page by page, I've slogged back through the first 50 pages of Dante's Inferno. I entered a few more contests, some for Hell to Pay, but more for Dante's Inferno, mostly because I really appreciate the feedback. I'd love to get the book as strong as possible before going out to agents/publishers.

I was feeling pretty good about my efforts. Until I got a critique back I had forgotten I'd requested. I had sent in 10 pages or so to PN Elrod who is doing professional level critiques and in return the author donates to her dog's vet bills. Sounded like a good cause. (If you're interested, the website is: http://www.vampwriter.com/CRITIQUE.htm)  Well, I sent in an admittedly rough early version of The Lesser Evil and she called it out in no uncertain terms. And I deserved it. Even though I'd already fixed many of her concerns (I'd sent it a few months ago and just figured it was so rough she declined to even look at it), the insight into the characters' motivation really got some creative juices flowing again, despite the birthing-baby fatigue.

So even though it was the last thing I thought I wanted to do, this critique re-energized me this weekend. I've worked on The Lesser Evil all day today and got excited about it again! PN Elrod said the critique would be a "brick in the face" and she did not lie. But it did get my proverbial butt off the chair (or IN the chair as the case might be) in the best possible way!