A Day In The Life

I overslept the first Monday of Daylight Savings 😭 I love the time change - the darker mornings and longer evenings - and usually don't mind the springing forward part, but this morning, I switched off my alarm, rolled back over, and slept through my early writing block. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of life, obviously, but I'm sad that it's thrown off the day's mojo. 

One of the best things about writing for a living is the flexibility it offers. The downside, though, is that because writing a book is a lengthy process, it takes discipline and patience to get to the finish line again and again. 

During the week, and often on weekends, too, if I can swing it, I set my alarm for six. The creative part of my brain works best first thing in the morning, without dog and horse and garden and other real-life distractions. I get up, make coffee, find something calming to stream - British garden and home shows, generally - at a low volume, and settle in with my laptop for a couple hours of writing. No email, no phone, just words. On a good day I can work in 2k or so, but at least 1k on a tired morning. The dogs are up about eight, they go for walks, and then Strider comes with me to the barn for morning feeding and turning out. I usually then write while I eat breakfast. After, there's more farm and house stuff to attend to; this is also when I try to take my photos for Insta, draft blog posts, work out, etc. I get a third block of writing time in somewhere between 2 and 5 p.m., while the dogs nap, and then it's evening barn time, another workout,/walk, and that leads to dinner and, like now, editing in the evening. Strider goes to bed at midnight - otherwise he can't make it through the night without a trip out, and I generally drop my Kindle on my face around 12:30 and manage to switch it off before I pass out. 

You're probably thinking that sounds like a lot of writing time. You might even be thinking I ought to churn out books much more quickly than I do. I really do hate the way the dishonesty in this industry has given some readers unrealistic expectations. 

But let's look at the honest parts, first: obviously, every writer has a unique approach and process. Some have the best Brain Juice in the mornings, some in the evenings, or middle of the night. There are those who write to music, to TV (me), or to complete silence. Coffeeshop writers, and home office writers, and, in my case in college, Student Center writers hammering out new fanfic chapters in the breaks between classes. Some writers draw up extensive outlines, and some, like me, are allergic to outlines. Some write out of order, and some start at the beginning, and write straight through to the end - that's me. 

In some cases - typically with flashback heavy books, like Sons of Rome - I'll write the book in two separate documents and then dovetail them together when I'm finished. Typically, though, I start with chapter one, and write the book all the way through. I have a daily minimum word count of 2k words, which I charge myself to meet even if it's a struggle, though shoot for more than that. Last week I hit between 5-6k every day, which isn't usual, but felt hugely productive. That's the equivalent of writing an entire college term paper every day. 

If you're thinking, so? That's your job. Sit down and type until you're done. Well...sitting down and typing is certainly a means of putting words on a page...but are they good words? Inspired, artful words that paint an earnest portrait of the characters? Have you balanced your metaphors, and captured the right tone with the dialogue? Have you worked through a character's inner turmoil? Or have you churned out the same old reheated, gas station burrito drek you slung the last ten books, the names and places copy-pasted in? 

Writing - story crafting - is not simply an act of typing. At least half of it is pausing to stare out a window and stew over a scene. A few paragraphs of dialogue can take an hour of writing, rewriting, and stewing, changing your mind. Tweaking, always tweaking. My process is not "get it done and fix it later." I might end up needing to fix it later, but I will have blocked out time in the moment to get it as near to perfect as I envisioned. Often, scenes that were a general idea flesh themselves out in unexpected, but necessary ways during the actual nitty-gritty of putting words on the page. Often, I have to pull up a previous book in a series to double-check something; or go walk around a bit on Google Earth to get a street reference correct. You have to Google so much. Sometimes I'll set a project aside to talk to my beta about an idea, work it out verbally before I try to write it. It's a whole process, and it takes a great amount of mental focus and acuity. (Eating eggs for breakfast helps!) Just like your body, your mind gets tired. I can have a hot streak of insane word counts for a week...and then, suddenly, it's brain soup, and even reading takes too much mental energy. Your body gets wrecked, too, without sufficient breaks. Your neck, back, and wrists will fail you if you spend too many uninterrupted hours at the computer. Your eyes start to ache; I swapped from contacts back to glasses a couple years ago and the terrible, daily migraines eased up enormously, so that's helpful. Even so, there are days when I simply hurt too badly to hit word count. I beat myself up over that, which does no good, but, well. It's a personal failing. 

Now. About that dishonesty I mentioned earlier. When I started out as a baby writer, fresh from fanfic land and eager to tackle original projects, I naively thought that everyone approached writing in a similar way. That it was the result of intense imagination of the sort that overflowed and needed to come pouring out of you. That each author was an individual, like me, sitting down to put their ideas on paper, one line, one scene, one page at a time. That it was a purely personal feat they'd poured their hearts and souls into. 

Cue the emails of offers from ghostwriters. I assumed ghostwriting was a way for non-writers to release books, say when a chef, or pro athlete, or celebrity wants to pen a biography. It's in fact startling and disappointing how many romance authors are in fact collections of several ghostwriters working together, with a singular name and face posing as "the author." I guess if you want to pay people to write books that you then slap your name and face on, go ahead...but why??? And why lie about it? Why pretend little old you wrote the books alone? Also, it's being talked about more broadly now, but using AI to write books is not a new thing. There's been "authors" using programs like that for a while: they plug in some of their work, some of another author's work, change some names, rework some of the wording, and voila, new "book." Some have been caught doing it, when the program glitches, or when they outright copy/pasted another author's work verbatim without changing anything. Then there's book stuffing, and authors pretending to be dead to make money off a funeral Go Fund Me - that story was wild, y'all. The sock puppet stuff is even wilder. Since I released Fearless, I've had several authors use various sock puppet accounts - badly and not cleverly, I might add - in an attempt to undermine my confidence, urge me to give up, or, even better, support them. These are women who've spent years giving me hassle. I can't comprehend wasting one second of time doing such a thing - and such a shitty thing at that. 

Disappointingly, publishing is crookeder than a dog's hind leg, and anyone who claims it isn't is, I promise you, doing something crooked. Not illegal, probably...but dishonest. In poor taste. And I hate the way some of the assertions from the ghostwriter-backed, copy/pasters has led audiences to believe that it's totally normal and feasible for an author to write something like a book a week. You'd have to be a cyborg to achieve that - not to mention, have no kids, no pets, no carpets to vacuum, no meals to prepare. It's a lie, but one that has shifted the narrative, so that working at a reasonable pace is deemed "slow." 

"Why can't you write as fast as so-and-so?" you might ask.

But ask yourself this: "Was anything written that fast worth reading?"

You have no idea how much I wish I could produce books at a faster rate. But I also refuse to release books that I'm not proud of. The next time someone starts spinning the "tra-la-la, I'm just so fast, and good, and positive, and I just get stuff done, writing's so effortless for me, ha ha!" tale? Question it. I promise it's, as Raven would say, a "load of bollocks."

Anyway, Happy Monday! I'm cranky because I overslept. I'm not sure how much writing I'll get done today, so I'm concentrating on editing instead. I'm thinking next week for Nothing More. Wish me luck, and good Brain Juice.