A Day in the Life: Lani Wendt Young

We're hailing from Down Under today!  Lani Wendt Young is a Samoan YA fantasy author who shares her Day in the Life from New Zealand. 

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A Day in the Life of a (Slightly Demented) Author: 

Lani Wendt Young

Monday

I get up at 5.30am, which I absolutely hate doing, especially if I’ve only just gone to bed at 2am. I then tackle the toughest task of my day – waking up my 13yr old daughter. She really does sleep like a log and if we ever got robbed, thieves could roll her up in her blanket, carry her out of the house and she still wouldn’t wake up.

6am. I drive her to Seminary which is a youth scripture-study class run by our church. It’s on 5 days a week for every school week of the year. While she’s in class, I go for a run. Or more aptly, a ‘very brisk walk alternated with a shuffly, jiggly sort of jog.’ I’m terrified of killers and attack dogs, so I usually just go many times round the block or the parking lot. If it’s raining (or if I’m feeling lazy) then I take my laptop and cram in some writing time.

7am. Back home. Mobilize the troops for breakfast and family prayer, then teenagers take off to catch the school bus while me and the three Terrors attack the house chores. We rush through dishes, floors and lunchbox prep. (My 8yr old son is the fastest, bestest vacuumer in this solar system.)

4 of the Fab5 ready for school

8.45am. Take the Terrors to school. Stock up on Diet Coke on my way home. Spend the next hour doing vital life-preserving things like…laundry and shutting the doors to all my children’s bedrooms so I’m not confronted by their chaotic messes.

how I survive

10am – Write stuff. And eat lots of snacks. I’m sorry to say that I often consume way more Doritos then actual pages written…

1pm – Emails. Update all social media. This can take anything from an hour to two spread out over the day and includes, updating my blog Sleepless in Samoa, Facebook author site, Twitter, Goodreads, skim thru publisher/author blogs that I follow.

2pm – Run work errands eg. Post Office to mail out signed book orders, drop off books to local indie bookstores who stock my book TELESA, that kind of stuff.

3pm – Get the Terrors from school. Try not to yell at Little Son for losing his shoes AGAIN, playing rugby in the mud AGAIN and ripping his school uniform AGAIN. Try not to freak out when Little Daughter asks, ‘Mum, did you ever like a boy who was older than you at school?’ Try not to crash the car when the 4yr old Beast is having a tantrum because I won’t detour to McDonalds.

me and Beast

4 to 6pm – The part of my day when I wish I could clone myself and have six of me. One to cook dinner. One to help Little Daughter with her homework. One to test Little Son on his spelling words. One to play with the Beast on the trampoline so she wont stand in the middle of the kitchen bellowing ‘Nobodys playing with me! I got nuffing friends. Can I help you do the cooking mum?’ One to drive and get the teenagers from Debate Club and rugby practice. And another one to lie on the bed with earphones on, blasting Eminem and muttering This is not my life. This is not my life. Any minute now, Im going to open my eyes and be a stunning supermodel in a glorious mansion with Ryan Reynolds cooking me dinner. Oh, and my WIP would be all written. And at the top of the bestseller list. Any minute now…

7.30pm – Ideally, all small and filthy children will be showered and fed by this time. This usually involves lots of threats/blackmail/coercion/pleading/the muttering of curse words and the drinking of copious amounts of Diet Coke. (By me, not the filthy children.) Teenagers do dishes and then sneak off to do Very Important Things. Like Facebook . Text their friends that they just said goodbye to a half hour ago. Weights in the gym downstairs. And supposedly to do homework in the Dens of Darkness that they call their bedrooms…

8pm – I read stories to small and very clean children. And then they are supposed to go to sleep. Ha.

9pm – I read a book on my Kindle. Partly because when you’re a fiction writer, reading a revolting number of novels is called “RESEARCH”. And partly because that’s how I relax and not be too mean to my children.

11pm – I write some more. The bestest time to write anything, anywhere, anytime is when the house is asleep.

Midnight. Or maybe 1am. Or maybe 2am – Sleep.

Lani is from Samoa and currently lives in Auckland, NZ with her Hot Significant Other and 5 children. The Significant Other travels often for work . Leaving the Fabulous Five Children at Lani’s mercy. *cue evil witch laughter*. She is the author of one non-fiction work ‘Pacific Tsunami-Galu Afi’, the YA Fantasy/Romance TELESA series, a short fiction collection and various stories for children written for the NZ primary school literacy curriculum.