I had hoped that the benign spirits of Washington and Lincoln would shine down upon our heating system over the weekend and restore order. Alas, the pressure remains low in our boiler. Like Washington himself, perhaps my radiators were bled a bit too much.
I'm feeling a rising sense of anxiety because our tenants, my friend J and his son E, only have a few radiators working at capacity now. And it is still winter.
When T and I decided to buy a house in Buffalo, we bought one split into two apartments (upstairs/downstairs) so we could pay our mortgage with the rental income while I wrote. And it was a good plan. I make almost as much from rent as I did teaching multiple college courses (sad, isn't it?), and we can write off a good deal of the improvements to this very old house on our taxes.
The downside is I have to work on the house, which takes time away from writing. A few of the small projects I have done by myself this year include: tearing old sheathing off the garage roof and reshingling, painting 1/2 of the exterior of the house (so far), putting a new floor in the rear entry, hanging a new steel door in the rear entry, and replastering and painting the walls in the foyer (which are 25' tall). There is more, but I forget.
I enjoy the work. It is not so much the desk time stolen by these projects that impacts my writing, it is the sense of accomplishment that is the problem. I enjoy the work too much.
When I build, renovate, or restore some part of the house, I have very nearly the same emotional experience as when I draft, revise, or edit some piece of creative writing. My compulsion to write comes from the need to craft something—to make something out of nothing or to improve on what I've already done. Once I get that feeling from a house project, my jones for writing begins to flag. I wonder if other writers feel this way? I'll bet they do.
At any rate, I'm calling professionals to deal with our hydronic problem. Now I can work on a query letter.
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