Becoming a full-time writer

Apr 30

Now that I’ve been writing for 6 weeks (crazy, I know), I’ve managed to hammer down my schedule. So I thought I would have a follow-up to my typical day.

8:00 – wake up; make coffee; tidy the house; read a couple of chapters from whatever book I’m reading

9:00 – sit down in front of the computer; read blogs and email; respond to email/comment on blogs; add a tweet or two

10:00 – start writing

12:00 – lunch

12:45 – reread what I’ve written and write some more

3:00 – write a blog post; check twitter; search for new blogs to follow; brainstorm for future ideas

4:30 – do some more writing

6:00 – work out

7:00 – make dinner

8:00 – watch tv

10:00 – read a few more chapters; go to bed.

So you can see that writing is only part of the job. In fact, only about 4-6 hours of my day are spent writing. The rest of my time is spent networking and following the industry. Sometimes this includes reading books, checking out predictions for where the market is headed, watching teenager-aimed television shows to better understand my target audience (if you haven’t checked out Dance Academy, do it. It’s been my favorite find), reading news articles to give me inspiration for future ideas, etc. And I know that when I get to the proper editing stage, my schedule will change even more and it will include fewer hours of actual writing.

What this also shows is that if you cannot write full-time, you can still write a novel. You just have to be more selective about which aspects of the job you focus on. When I was working full-time, I cut most of the non-writing tasks from my writing life. With my limited time, they just didn’t make sense. Now that I have the time to really make writing my proper job, I can more easily justify all of the extras that go into a writing career.

How much time do you spend writing a day or a week?

Apr 09

Navigating through a WIP can be as complicated as trying to navigate the Tokyo subway system.

Last week was a week of progress, only it wasn’t the adding to the word count kind of progress. Instead, it was a week of removing words, removing whole scenes, to get my WIP back on track. Talk about exhausting!

Writing’s Awesome. Editing Kind of Sucks.

I love writing. Nothing is more exciting than seeing your pages fill with words created by you, seeing your characters come to life, seeing the pictures in your head become reality on the paper. Editing and rewriting, on the other hand, kind of sucks. It means these brilliant scenes have to be reworked or sometimes erased all together. It means those words you thought so hard about, suddenly cease to exist.

Usually when I hit a roadblock, I know that means I went off course somewhere. And I start to find all sorts of other non-writing things I have to do because I know what going off course means. It means you have to find a way to get back on course. And sometimes it is hard to get yourself to go back and painstakingly rework the problems. But I think that is the difference between someone who enjoys writing as a hobby and someone who has chosen to make writing a career. Big words from someone who has yet to submit anything to a publisher and has definitely not made a cent from writing. But all the same, I notice that the writing I did in high school rarely led to serious rewriting. The writing I do now that I am taking my writing seriously, now that I know I have to present my best piece of work if I hope to get a paycheck, involves a lot of thinking and strategizing, and yes, even deleting.

How do you cope with roadblocks? Do you plow through them, or do you go back and try to figure out where you went wrong and, ultimately, fix the mistakes?

Mar 26

The windy road

I’ve finished my first week as a full-time writer. I know a lot of people have asked me what that means, how I will spend my time. So I thought I’d start a little series on being a full-time writer. As you will see, my first week did not go that well, but I’m hoping the second week will be better.

Day 1

OK, day 1 was a huge flop, as you will see if you read my post from last week, Diving In, or Taking Baby Steps. So day 1 was spent waiting for Comcast, nursing a migraine, dealing with the broken radiator, and researching claw foot tub storage solutions, as well as placing a massive order on Amazon for all of the things we will need in our new apartment. I did manage a little bit of work related stuff though – I reread chapter 1 of my WIP and I wrote a blog post. This day definitely did not go the way I imagined it would, but I suppose it could have been worse.

Day 2

Day 2 was not all that much better than day 1, and I realized pretty quickly that I am taking more of the baby steps approach as opposed to diving right in. I am going to blame the move on this one. So day 2 I took a walk around the neighborhood to try to help the headache, checked out the twitter sphere, read some of the blogs I follow, tried to donate blood but was rejected because of a recent trip to Roatan, bought some more things for the new apartment (gotta love The Container Store) and then I got to real work. If by real work I mean cleaning up my social networking sites. I went through Goodreads and added reviews and ratings to books I’ve read this year and then sorted through my to-read list to see what competition is out there for my WIP. I then did some tweeting to try to get my presence back up there. And then I sat down to read Julia Karr’s TRUTH. The best part about being a full-time writer – reading now counts as research.

Day 3

Today started with the best intentions. I cleaned up Twitter and added some tweets. I read some blogs. And then more move related things took over. It is really amazing how distracting an unfurnished apartment can be.

Day 4

Much like day 3, only I did manage to finish reading over my current WIP and started adding some new content. Still, I’m beating myself up about my lack of progress. But maybe it was a bit ambitious to think I could move to a new city and just dive into writing.

Day 5

The fiance and I took the day off to just spend sometime doing the things we need to do to get the apartment ready. We also went on a hunt for a chair so we could at least have a comfortable place to sit. This did not go well.

Week One Wrap Up

As you can see, my first week as a full-time writer was a bit of a flop. I did start a side project for a writing contest over the weekend though (details to come in a later post) and I saw The Hunger Games movie. I have high hopes that week 2 will be a bit smoother, if for no other reason than that we will (fingers crossed) have furniture.

Mar 04

In 2 weeks, I will be trading in the full-time job and guaranteed paycheck to try my hand at being a full-time writer. While it’s scary, I’m incredibly excited. Of course, there’s one extra challenge that comes along with this switch – moving across the country to California.

In preparing for this transition, finding an apartment in San Francisco that would provide me with a positive working environment was key. Even though it meant sacrificing luxury, finding an apartment with a separate office was non-negotiable. In my current apartment, there are two large rooms – a bedroom/office combo and a dining room/living room/office. The lack of dedicated writing space makes it very hard for me to focus and, while I like the apartment from a living perspective, it is not always the best from a working perspective. When your home is going to become your office, these are important distinctions.

Luckily, my fiance agreed with the importance of a designated space for me, and so we agreed to sacrifice some living comforts, like an open floor plan, a good-sized kitchen, and even a dishwasher (sigh) so that we could afford a two bedroom apartment to provide me with my own writing space.

As I wait to take this next step in my writing career, I cannot stop planning out the most efficient space for writing, which has also distracted me from writing because it means I’ve spent many hours online searching through magazine photos and store catalogs. But I would rather have the distractions now than when I get there.

Stay tuned for more updates on taking the leap, quitting my day job, and making my writing dreams come true. Have you taken the leap? Have you thought about it?

Becoming a full-time writer

My Life as a Full-time Writer: Week 6

One step forward, four steps back: my life as a full-time writer week 3