When Do You Write?

A friend asked me what time of the day do I write. For me, there's no specific time. Some writers need a schedule, and if they can stick to it more power to them.

Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury because there's always something going on.

When I was practicing law, I wrote during my lunch hour and whatever time I could have to myself on the weekends. Which frankly wasn't much because GK was a toddler.

When I stopped practicing law (thanks to high blood pressure), GK was still in public school. It gave me some time during the day between dropping him off and picking him up. It was only about six hours, but I made the most of it I could. The problem? I was still very much a newbie. At that point I'd only finished three novels--one of which will never see the light of day. The other two were Blood Magick and Zombie Love.

Because of our finances, I had to get a job a year after I'd left law. Unfortunately, that was about the time we pulled GK from public school. The public sphere just wasn't working for him. It wasn't working for me and DH either. We were constantly getting phone calls from the school personnel. Neither of us was getting work done.

So, I worked part-time at a Hallmark store, wrote a legal column for a law enforcement magazine, home-schooled my only offspring by myself, and tried to write in whatever spare moments I could grab. By that time, I was making some headway with my submissions, but after reading the full manuscript, the agent or editor would invariable say, "Love the story. Love the voice. I can't sell this."

In the meantime, Amazon was allowing writers to upload their novels in e-book format so Amazon had content for their brand-new e-reader, the Kindle. In 2011, I decided to take a chance. Heck, Maybe trad publishers couldn't sell my book, but maybe I could.

Within fifteen months, I was making more through online book sales than I did at my other two jobs. The magazine crashed and burned during the summer of 2011, and I quit my retail job the summer of 2012.

I had time to write again even though I was still homeschooling. I would get up and be at the local Barnes & Noble when it opened at nine a.m., write for a couple of hours, then head home for lunch and a afternoon of schooling. On weekends, I tried to have the lesson plan and materials ready for the following week, so I could have a little more time to write after GK went to bed. All of this worked because, DH was scheduled for Pacific Time hours with his employer.

During the stresses between having to watch my health, worrying GK, and trying to keep my marriage together, I often had insomnia. On those nights, I'd write until I became drowsy.

At the end of 2012, my father-in-law had a heart attack. About the same time, GK asked about going back to public school. So we made the difficult decision to move from Texas back to Ohio.

DH and GK moved to Ohio in August of 2013 to get GK enrolled in school and for them to help the in-laws. In the meantime, I would do the last little things to get the house ready to go the market. We thought the worse case scenario was I wouldn't have the house ready until Christmas.

It took a lot longer because everything seemed to break after my family drove north. On the plus side, I had plenty of time to write because I had no interruptions and we had weeks or months of saving up for the additional repairs.

Once we were all in Ohio, I was back to writing during the day while GK was at school. Just one problem. DH also worked from home. He had for the last ten years. But now we were in an 1100 sq. ft. apartment instead of a 2500 sq. ft. house. And when DH is on the phone with a client, he was loud!

It didn't help that I was having trouble with insomnia again. I started staying up after DH went to bed and writing into the wee hours of the morning. He'd take GK to school. I'd wake up in time to pick up GK.

But shortly before GK was done with high school, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Which meant I needed to be up before two in the afternoon for various doctor's appointments and scans.I couldn't stick to a writing schedule for a year. I still write, but I did when I had the strength and the quiet.

A couple of years later, GK was off doing Army stuff, and DH and I found a home that would fit our working styles. Our offices are on opposites side of the house. I can't hear him. He can't hear me. For the most part, we are back to a relatively normal daytime schedule.

Except with everything going on in our lives over the past three years, I don't have everything unpacked, and it's driving me crazy. So now, on days I have a morning yoga class, I take my travel laptop with me. After class, I stop at Starbucks for breakfast and an hour or two of writing. Plus, I do writing sprints with some fellow writers for an hour or three in the evenings. In between, I work on the boxes and sort between stuff to keep, stuff for the spring garage sale, and stuff that just needs to be thrown out.

It's probably going to take me the rest of the year to empty the boxes inside the house. Nest year, I'll focus on emptying the storage unit where everything that we couldn't keep in the apartment ended up.

But I may change my writing time depending on the whims of the one true god Murphy.

So what I'm trying to say in this long-winded diatribe is find whatever time to write works for you in your current stage of life. But be flexible enough to change that time when you have to. Good luck!

Gaining Traction

Our little town has a huge number of restaurants per capita. That also means we have an equally huge number of coffee shops.

I had really looked forward to the end of the pandemic so I could go back to the George House near the University of Findlay campus. Unfortunately, it has gone out of business. The Timmies near our house had reduced their hours. The staff at the Timmies across town glare at you if you dare to sit and eat at one of their tables, nevermind being in your laptop. Cafe Amici has excellent coffee and no parking since it's downtown.

Why am I talking about coffee shops? Because sometimes, I need to get out of the house in order to write.

DH and GK used to laugh at my because I'd circulate from room-to-room on the first floor. When that didn't work, I go to the neighborhood Barnes & Noble or one of the nearby Starbucks.  I know it's such a cliche. Also, I don't know why a change of scenario works to unstick my writing, but it does.

Best of all though, we now have two standalone Starbucks in town.

I've been stuck since the beginning of the year. Normally, I'd have half a novel done by now, but I'm struggling with edits since November. The cataract surgeries didn't help. Neither did my normal trigger of cleaning the bathroom. We bought this house so I could have my own office for crying out loud! And all I do is stare at the boxes I haven't unpacked yet.

So this morning, I grabbed Baby Blue and my Kylo Ren flashdrive and drove to the closest standalone Starbucks.

It worked! Solutions started clicking. My grilled cheese sandwich even got cold as I fixed the issues on the current manuscript. I came home feeling pretty good. I may have to go to Starbucks every day next week to keep up the momentum, but it'll be worth it.

I'm Writing.

 

While eating breakfast. Yes, I know what time it is.

The Movie Mania That Wasn't and Other Assorted Thoughts

We went to see Black Panther last week. I started to write a review, but I want to go see it again. I think in my fangirl *SQUEE* I may have missed some pertinent things. Things that probably won't change my overall score of the movie, but I want to see how two different audiences react to it.

To be frank, I know my perspective of Black Panther is skewed by my whiteness, just as I know my perspective of Wonder Woman was skewed by my femaleness. I know my review of Wonder Woman would have been slightly different if I'd waited until I'd seen it for a second time in the theater.

And not for the worse either.

Both movies have made me more conscious of my own biases, especially how I went along with certain behaviors to get along. That's not good for any of us in the long run. There's something half-formed in my mind. Something that I think I'm trying to flesh out in the themes of the Justice series. But the thought needs to simmer a little more before I present it to the world.

As I think I've mentioned here, DH and I have started house hunting. Since we're having trouble finding something that meets our needs, we're leaning toward building.

The one house that would have worked for us, we were overbid on back in December. So I tracked down who owns the plans for that design. We met with their agent on Friday.

The builder's plans for that same subdivision have been delayed until August over getting the water and sewer lines laid in a timely manner. I think that will work out for us in the long run. It gives my time to get out my books (or at least set them up on pre-order) on the aggressive schedule I've set for myself for 2018. It also gives us time to save up money for the essentials you don't think about, like the washer and dryer, window treatments, shower curtains, etc.

For the most part, I'm on track with my schedule. I lost this weekend over prepping tax paperwork, but that's a necessary evil. I think I can make up the lost writing time next weekend.

I hope.

In the meantime, A Modicum of Truth had the best opening week of any of my books. I think I'm on the right track through the raspberry bushes.

Now, if I can get the Muse to stop throwing new shinys in my path for a bit, everything would be hunky-dory.

Trying Something New

New writers constantly want the magic bullet, the secret handshake, whatever you want to call it.

What they're really afraid to do is experiment. There's so many ways to write. So many different methodologies. All of them have pluses and minuses. What works for one writer may not work for another, and vice-versa.

There's an old saying BICFOK. It stands for "Butt In Chair Fingers On Keyboard."

It's that simple. And that difficult.

I'm one of those writers who likes to carve out a straight hour or two to write. Preferably in the afternoon or night. Because I am SO not a morning person.

But with a husband and a kid, that's not always realistic, either from the amount of time standpoint or the time of day standpoint. It's also not healthy sitting in one position for so long as I age.

This morning I tried a couple of different things. One, I started writing a half hour after I crawled out of bed. Two, I tried writing is short bursts, aka sprints.

Sprints have been advocated by several writers I've known over the years. I've only ever tried them with other people, and the experience wasn't the best because there's always that one person who needs to talk.

(Yeah, sometimes I was the guilty party.)

This morning though, I tried three solitary 25-minute sprints. On the plus side, I came in on my normal speed of 600 words per minute hour. (Dang! Talk about a Freudian slip! I WISH I could type 600 words per minute.) On the negative side, I had a problem getting back into the story after my breaks. Though in all fairness, I took more than the 5-minute bathroom/drink break that I was supposed to do.

The reason I'm doing this? We're looking for a house, and I need to make the most of my writing time if I'm going to maintain my business schedule in the middle of a move.

So, I'm going to try sprints again, and see if I can't refine my technique.

Anything y'all are trying new to improve your writing for 2018?

My Former Webmistress Has a Real Life

If you clicked on my main website last week, you were probably surprised by its disappearance.

My webmistress retired. She gave me plenty of warning that she was ready to hang up her keyboard when I paid her invoice last May, but in the midst of the 2015 family crap, I forgot.

Until my calendar dinged that I needed to pay her soon.

Oops!

So my other blog will act as my temporary website until I can find a new webperson or I figure out how to use one of the many website design tools out there. I'll take a weekend after A Question of Balance is published and polish both blog sites.

Personally, I'd much rather get new books out. *smile*

Time: The Epidemic

There's been a number of posts by writers lately about the lack of time. These posts come from both sides of the fence.

Trad published writers are surprised that their publishers expect to do stuff that doesn't involve writing, like social media. Or they have to have five different discussions with three different editors over something they stetted on the proofs on one book. (FYI for those who haven't been through the process--"Stet" means keep something the way the writer wrote it, not the way the copyeditor wants to change it.)

Indie published writers whine about how much time dealing with marketing and subcontractors takes out of their day. They don't have as much writing time because of all the extraneous minutia of running a business.

Here's my two cents:

1) Regardless of how a writer has their books published, they are a small business person.

That's right, even the trad folks ARE NOT EMPLOYEES. (Actually, they are treated worse than employees, but that's a post for another day.) That means a writer is going to put in the 60-80 hours a week, more than a normal self-employed person in any other field does. If the writer puts in less, that's their choice, but the really successful folks, yeah, that's what they do.

If you don't believe me, go read Dean Wesley Smith's blog (there's a link under "Blogs I Follow" on your right). The man wears me out just reading his daily schedule. And yes, he talks about lack of time to finish a current wip, but he's also about to open a new store, which in digging into his days lately.

2) Writers can have unrealistic expectations about writing as a full-time job.

Some folks think writing means scribbling or typing for a couple of hours a day, then hobnobbing with all the important people. Dinner parties. Book signings with mobs of fans.

As much as I love Nathan Fillion, Castle gives a very unrealistic portrayal of a working writer's life. If the writer can't write, he, mom, and daughter don't eat. And he sure as hell can't afford an apartment in New York City the size of the one on the show. And what about healthcare? (I say this as a parent who needs to cough up the dough this summer to have the rest of GK's wisdom teeth removed before they ruin the lovely job the orthodontists have done.)

Even the great Neil Gaiman has to change dirty diapers in between writing. So it's not all glamor and fun.

3) Writers have to learn how to fit writing in between everything else.

While it would be wonderful to have a block of hours to just write, that's not realistic for most of us. In fact, I'm a little jealous of my friends who don't have kids. Or parents. Or health problems. Lately, I've been getting more writing done in the forty-five minutes between my son going to bed and my husband going to bed.

Or heading to the school pick-up line ten minutes early, just for the quiet in the car, and tap out a few lines on my phone.

I know a lot of folks preach about making writing a priority in your day, but sometimes, that just isn't realistic.


What it all comes down to is making expectations realistic. There's also the caveat of being careful what you wish for. I know of a couple of folks who got the proverbial brass ring in this merry-go-round we call the writing industry, but it didn't make all their problems magically go away. It only added new layers of loss and problems.

So think about how you, and those around you, would really handle your success. That's just as important as how y'all handle failure.