Five o’clock in the morning, I wake up, jump out of bed, get dressed according to the weather, then go for a five or six kilometre run in the woods. If the weather is really bad, I do an hour on the rowing machine instead. Then I have a shower and get to work.
Marie-Sabine Roger
I generally work for four hours non-stop. Then I reply to my emails and continue working on my thesis on Proust, and read over the draft of my critical study on Hemingway. All this takes me up to midday, at which time I go down to the kitchen.
After lunch I read a few of the top stories on international events, then I get back to work, replying to emails as they come in and putting the finishing touches to a couple of articles for university literary reviews.
I have a short nap, then it’s almost four o’clock—time to reread the pages I wrote this morning and correct them… six o’clock already. How time flies! My partner comes in from the garden, arms full of vegetables, and together we prepare the evening meal, plucking one of the chickens from our coop. Then, after a game of chess—which I usually win—we watch a Turkish film with Chinese subtitles (or vice versa), after which I work for another hour or two. Then there’s just time for a few pages of Hegel and it’s midnight. I go to sleep, until…
Three o’clock in the morning, the time at which I almost always wake up, because I am an insomniac. I try to get back to sleep, generally unsuccessfully. Towards six o’clock I think vaguely about getting out of bed and going for a walk in the woods (I hate running), but the duvet is so soft and the sun has barely come up, so I decide to go back to sleep, just for half an hour or so… At nine o’clock I open a bleary eye. I decide to get up. At half-past nine I actually get up. I skip breakfast, do a bit of Qigong (that bit is true) and then get to work. That is to say, I read my work from the previous day—or days—and find myself stricken with terrible doubts. (If I am only stricken with terrible doubts once in twenty-four hours then that is an excellent day). I sit and wait for inspiration, which must have been held up by other more pressing engagements. I make my way through my story like an explorer blundering through a jungle without a machete or a compass. I feel like tearing out my hair in frustration (luckily I have planned for this eventuality and have short hair). I make the flimsiest excuses to get up from my desk. I do the shopping, cook a meal, browse the Internet, give myself a tarot reading. Then I get back work. Or not, as the case may be. At the end of the day, my partner comes in from the garden, arms red and blotchy from the stinging nettles, but not full of vegetables, since we (still) don’t have any. No chickens either.
In the evening, we watch a film by Ken Loach, the Cohen brothers or Tarantino, with French subtitles. Then I curl up in bed with one of my favourite detectives (for the avoidance of doubt, this is a crime novel I’m talking about), before I go to sleep and dream of having the sort of life where I do everything I wrote at the beginning of this article, before I wake up at…
Get Well Soon by Marie-Sabine Roger is published by Pushkin Press, £8.99