Day 46: Business before pleasure

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 46: Business before pleasure

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my project has taken a bit of a beating lately. When I first started out, I wrote every day, but over the past week or so, my project has been on the backburner.

That is not to say that I haven’t been writing. On the contrary, I’ve been writing quite a bit, but for clients. Paying clients. And you know how it goes, business before pleasure.

The client in question was a travel agent who wanted to draw attention to various European cities. As such, I visited London, Ronda, Barcelona, Sicily, Wallis, and Geneva. My visits were online, of course, researching various websites for information on these cities.

And you cannot imagine the work involved to write a 600-word article. But I did it. I researched until I was blue in the face, typed until my fingers were numb and in the process learned all about what there is to see and do in these various cities. With the exception of London, I visited these places personally, but it was so long ago, I can’t remember the details.

I do remember Barcelona though. I was only a teenager when I was there with my family and their friends, but my visit to the Sagrada Familia was one of those memorable moments that stayed with me.

Having visited Madrid, Malaga, Valencia, Seville and Granada, we had our fill of churches, cathedrals and other historic buildings such as the Alhambra. When we arrived in Barcelona and Mom suggested a visit to the Sagrada Familia, we thought … great, another church. Dad said as much with an exasperated “Haven’t we seen enough churches?”  

“Apparently the Sagrada Familia is quite special,” Mom said. “It’s unlike any other church.”

Oh, and it was special alright. Mom was quite right, the church was unlike any other church. After we stood in line for a good 20 minutes, in the baking hot sun I might add, we paid the fee to enter the church. We pushed open the heavy door and … we stood under the clear blue sky. What the heck?

Par explanation … back in those days, the Sagrada Familia wasn’t finished. It still isn’t finished, but back then there was no church to speak off. There was a church façade, but very little else. There was no floor, no windows, no pews, no altar, and most importantly … no ceiling. We felt horribly cheated.

But back to my writing days.

Another job that kept me busy was translating. Dutch to English, Spanish to English, French to Dutch, and German to English. Some of these works were enjoyable, others were a bit of a pain in the butt. 

There was this one particular job where a love-smitten man wanted a 1700-word blog post translated about some skanky saxophone player. I nearly gave up on the whole thing.

But all these were paying jobs, and since money is welcome here, I kept plodding along. 

Right now I’m on a break. There is no work available. However, that can change tomorrow and then off we go again.

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