At parties, I get a lot of questions about my schedule, my inspiration, what books I like to read, how I work with editors, proofreaders, cover artists, other authors. Do I use special writing software? Basically, I get questions about being a writer.
I will be at a party, sipping a cocktail, making small talk and someone will ask, “What do you do, Maddy?”
I tell them I am an author, which leads to a discussion of being self-published, writing romance, how many books have I published (nine to date) and then their eyes grow big and wide and the questions begin. Usually rapid fire.
So, I thought I might avoid answering these questions repeatedly at parties, and address some of them here, on the blog. Starting today, with my schedule. This is part one of Party Talk for Authors, or answers to Frequently Asked Questions.
Party Questions Authors Should Answer
Do I write every day? Do I have a favorite time to write, a more productive time to write? Where do I do my writing? Where is my special writing place?
Here are answers to these and other questions about when I write and why.
1/ Time of Day
I used to wake up and write immediately, and I mean immediately. The only thing that stood between me and writing was a cup of coffee. Getting dressed, even brushing my teeth, waited until the muse had passed.
And that was the issue, I was a slave to my muse. Not anymore. After six years as an author, I have learned that the muse is fickle and cannot be trusted. Now I write five days a week on a schedule. My schedule is determined by my membership in Pencils & Lipstick’s Sprint group. I log into a call, a timer is set and like it or not, during the next two hours, I write. I write this blog post, or a few chapters of a book, or the blurb for the back cover of the novels in my new All’s Crazy in Love series. If it needs to be written, I write it.
Why during sprints? Because I have accountability, and I can track my words per hour. Guess what? They have gone up, more than doubled in fact, simply by promising zero distractions, except Gracie who keeps her own schedule, and working against a timer.
I can do this up to eighteen hours a week, mornings and afternoons, offering me lots of excellent writing time. The wonderful support from my fellow sprinters doesn’t hurt.
Sit Your Butt in the Chair!
2/ Put your butt in the chair
Someone wiser than me —Stephen King maybe?—said the number one job of a writer is to get their butt in the chair, and he was right.
Committing to anything means committing to it. Writing is no different. If I sit in front of the computer and decide not to move until I have written, I will write. Period. Number one rule of productivity, put yourself where you will be productive.
For me, that is the glass table desk I have placed in a sunny window of my guest room. My laptop sits in front a a decent sized monitor that blocks a small piece of my white board. The white board contains my todos and plans, the monitor is covered in Post It’s guiding me through my current project and ideas I am reflecting upon at the moment.
The computer has a separate keyboard, not as ergonomically friendly as it should be, and I am sadly buried in cords, but this is where the magic happens. When I sit in my chair, I know I am there to write. And poof, like magic, that is exactly what I do.
3/ Special Places
Before the pandemic, I did enjoy the quiet of a Starbucks or the Evanston Public Library. There was something marvelous about doing my own thing alone surrounded by people. My sprints have replaced any need I have to be out and about, which is better for health and because I don’t have to fight for an electric outlet.
4/ Staying productive
I already mentioned that I capture my daily word count. It matters for me because I am on a particularly ambitious schedule for 2022. In addition to rewriting all of my fully re-edited Beguiling Bachelor Novels, I am writing a 12-book series, All’s Crazy in Love. If my average book is about 75,000-80,000 words, and there are twelve books, each written, rewritten before editing, rewritten after editing and proofing, that is a lot of words! Millions of words!
If you have ever worked with a professional project manager, they have asked you if you know how to eat an elephant? Answer: one bite at a time. In other words, millions of words are written one sprint at a time. So are newsletters, blog posts, social media copy, blurbs for my books and for other authors, responses to emails, and so on and so on.
For me, that means time blocking. Wikipedia defines time blocking as “Timeblocking or time blocking is a productivity technique for personal time management where a period of time—typically a day or week—is divided into smaller segments or blocks for specific tasks or to-dos.” At the beginning of each week, I take out my calendar, make a list of “Maddy’s must-do’s “and time block hem onto the calendar (and Trello.)
Once I have my list, I can assign it to a day and time. So, this week, blog is this morning, putting the final changes post-proofreading on Beholden is this afternoon. Tomorrow I am finishing the rewrites on Avery’s story for the All’s Crazy series and participating in an afternoon meeting for my Mental Health America board. Wednesday I will start the rewrites on Willow’s story and so it goes.
To be honest, it sounds regimented, and maybe it is, but it also helps me know what I will be writing so that I have my brain prepped when I sit down to write. Outlines help too but plotting versus pantsing is an entire blogpost all its own.
Does my little plan work? Most of the time, yes. When Gracie gets feisty, or the phone rings a great deal, or I go down the rabbit hole of my emails, things go to hell pretty fast.
“I accept chaos, I’m not sure if it accepts me,” Bob Dylan famously said. If it’s good enough for the great songwriter, protester and Nobel Laureate, it’s good enough for me. So, I will continue to time block, word count, put my ass in the chair, and understand that “the answer is blowing in the wind.”
Send me your questions or add them to the comments below and I will do my best to answer them in the future.