BY STEVE BATES

They key to writing successful fiction is staying disciplined. Schedule every day rigorously so you can be creative but still crank out at least a dozen pages of a short story or a novel. Don’t be distracted by developments such as such as nuclear war, your house catching on fire, or discovering an orphan sock in the dryer. These problems will go away with or without your attention.

Here’s my typical daily regimen:

7:00:  Breakfast: Oatmeal and Greek yogurt, topped with modest quantities of psychoactive substances in order to keep my edge. (Note to self: Use “Psycho Active” as the title of my next novel.)

7:30:  I go through emails. There’s a message from an agent who took one look at the first sentence of my manuscript and replied, “I’ve read better opening sentences in fortune cookies.” (To be fair, I have read some intriguing fortune cookie messages.) Another email is from a publisher who declined to buy my short story because “the market is flooded with yarns about gender-fluid killer robots from Neptune who find love in all the wrong places.” And my writing coach is telling me she’s taking a three-month leave to enter a healing ashram in the Southwest because of “the trauma your writing has inflicted on my soul.” I’m having an impact!

8:00:  I get on the exercise bike and the treadmill while listening to rock music that was recorded before you were born.

8:40:  Caffeine. There’s no point hallucinating great scenes unless you’re lucid enough to write them down.

8:50:  Social media: I check for reactions to my posts on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Bender, Doofus, Braindead, and other popular sites. Then I “like” at least three dozen posts from my connections, even if I haven’t read them. Got to keep up the interaction.

9:30:  I actually work on a story. This one is about two time-traveling kittens that are secret spies, master chefs, and relationship counselors. They prevent the assassination of the president, rescue thousands of people from a Category 17 hurricane or earthquake, and receive a startling message from a kidnapped otter that both of my lead characters had loved in the past. And that’s all in the first chapter. But I can’t decide whether my cats should be named Willy and Nilly or Peanut and Butter (Suggestions?). I don’t want to run into writer’s block, so I’ll return to this later.

10:20:  I check the weather. I have no need to do so. It’s so cold and dark and wet that I don’t expect to go anywhere before March, but that’s what old people do.

10:30:  I eat half a banana. I decide on the inner half.

10:40:  I play Solitaire on my computer. I find that this helps my subconscious deal with some of the plot issues I have been struggling with. Really.

11:00:  I write a paragraph for my story! It might not be my best paragraph, but you have to start somewhere. You can come back later and improve it. In this one, one of my time-traveling kittens shoots an evil dog monster with a ray gun.

11:45:  I call Congress, because some guy on TV told me to. I get a couple of subcommittee chairmen from the House and a bored Senator from one of those flyover states.

12:00:  Lunch. My wife relates the latest developments in the nuclear war, fire damage to the house, and her efforts to find the match for the orphan sock.

12:30:  Caffeine. Lots of it.

12:45:  I get back to my story. I replace the sentence “Nilly [or Butter] raises the ray gun and shoots Dirge the Dog Monster in the balls” with “A sly yet confident but apprehensive smile slides sullenly across the anxious if not worried face of Nilly [or Butter] as [he/she/they] pulls the trigger, experiencing immense if not cathartic pleasure as the stream of deadly particles reaches, penetrates, and disintegrates all the delicate tissues that Dirge had struggled for so many years to clean effectively.”

1:30:  Social media again. This time, I “dislike” as many posts as I can, particularly those from people who do not share demographic characteristics with me.

2:00:  I finish proofreading a novel that has been accepted by a publisher. I notice that all 47 mistakes I flagged last month have been fixed, but the AI editing algorithm my publisher uses added passages from “Finnegans Wake” and “Humpty Dumpty” at random to my story. I decide that this is good enough and give the publisher a thumbs up.

3:15:  I yell “Kid, get off my lawn!”

3:30:  I update the list of things I have to ask my doctor about. Because the people on TV told me to. I add Veozah, Peeless, and Braindrain to my already lengthy list.

3:45:  I’ve built up a headache from working so hard, so I stick my head in the microwave for a few minutes, on low. (Kids: Don’t try this at home.)

4:00:  I buckle down and finish the paragraph about the showdown between the kittens and the evil dog. Final sentence: “Dirge stumbled eerily backwards, a grim countenance cemented upon his ugly visage, and proclaimed, “You are a great shot as well as a sympathetic character, Nilly [or Butter]. I can only hope there’s a dog heaven waiting for a wayward pup such as me. Fairwell, noble feline, fair … arggghhhhh.”

4:40:  I reward myself with more online Solitaire and a couple of shots of gin for a day well spent.