Writers Write (or, What I Really Do All Day)

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you're probably getting a very skewed idea of my life. I drink lots of coffee, I'm always sneaking off for champagne and cake with the Novelistas or shooing escaped farmyard animals out of my kitchen. You know I live in Wales, because I grumble about the weather and Instagram photos of sheep. And, oh yes, apparently I sometimes write books. Look, check the header, it's official: 'Sometimes writes books'.

I am supposed to be a full-time writer but sometimes it does feel like 'sometimes' rather than 'all the time'. So what, exactly, do I do all day?

Let's start with a photo of my desk. It doesn't always look like this. In fact, it never looks like this, which is why I took a photo of it about two years ago. If you could see it now, there are two huge piles of crap important paperwork on either side of me, with about an inch of space around my laptop.

I set my alarm for seven, even on weekends, even on holidays. (It's amazing how motivated you can be when you're self-employed.) While the rest of my family (one husband, two children, one hamster) fight it out for the bathroom (not the hamster; she makes her own arrangements), I switch on my laptop and read newspapers and blogs and link anything I find interesting to Twitter, Facebook, etc. Back when I had a 'proper' job (or, as my son likes to put it, 'when dinosaurs roamed the earth'), one of my roles was to read the morning papers and identify trends. I suspect I spent more time reading up on celebrity exploits rather than identifying trends, but the training came in useful and it's now become a habit.

Where were we? Oh yes, newspapers, blogs, social networking. Followed by chores. I have no staff (excuse me while I roll around the floor laughing) and you can tell how well the current book is going by how clean my house is. Then I stop for coffee, to include answering emails and more social networking. Tip: If you find yourself being sucked in by Twitter, Facebook and all the rest of it, set yourself a time limit! In and out. Think: Networking Ninja. Got it?

After my coffee break and the Networking Ninja-ing, I write until I break for lunch. (I've blogged about my writing process here and how I use notebooks to write here). If the writing is going well, I read someone else's book. If it's not, I'm stuck with reading my own book, emailed to my Kindle Fire. Somehow it looks different on a Kindle and I find it easier to identify which parts are not working. I use the highlighting feature: pink for the parts I need to delete, orange for the parts that need to be reworded, blue for punctuation issues and yellow for everything else. The text-to-speech option also helps me spot the odd missing or repeated word, and stops me falling asleep over my own book.

And then it's back to work. I stop to do the school run and cook dinner and sometimes work into the evening, or into the night if it's really not going well. It takes me a morning to write a blog post or an article, two weeks to a month to write a short story/novella (depending on length) and nine to twelve months to write a book. I also design my own book covers, which you can read about here.

If I leave the house (yes, I do occasionally leave the house) I take my Kindle with me, and when I go to sleep I'm sure you can work out what I'm dreaming about.

So there you have it, that's what I do all day: write books, novellas, short stories, blog posts and articles - and do you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way.

Because I'm a writer, and writers write.

Related Posts:

Trust Me I Lie (or, the true confessions of a writer on social media)

You Know You're a Writer When ...

Where I Write

A Room of One's Own

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Seeking Inspiration

I made a joke on Facebook yesterday, about spending the afternoon untangling the synopsis of my new book, Trust Me I Lie. It has two timelines, so I meant that I wanted to make sure each flashback scene was in the correct place. It is easier to experiment with moving paragraphs in a synopsis, than it is to move huge chunks of text in a 100,000 word book!

My friend (and fellow Novelista), Valerie-Anne Baglietto, misunderstood and thought I was stuck and in search of inspiration. She kindly listed all the ways I could kickstart my imagination: Create a Pinterest board (she knows how much I love Pinterest), create a 'soundtrack' of inspiring music or, failing either of those, eat cake! (The Novelistas have a bit of an obsession with cake!)

Valerie-Anne and I apparently share some methods in common. I've already created a Pinterest board. And I've blogged about the inspirational benefits of Pinterest before (here). It is easy to dismiss Pinterest as a time sucker - pinning and re-pinning pretty photos of dream houses and cupcakes, but for a writer it's incredibly useful. For my new book I have pinned photos of the ruined house where my novel is set, which is based on a real place called Baron Hill. I have famous quotes, which sum up the character of my heroine, who has a different temperament to anyone I've ever written about before, and references to all those dark, gothic-style fairy tales which I love, because I have a character who illustrates them.

I have a soundtrack too - don't laugh! It's an incredibly useful way of plunging yourself right back into your story when you've been interrupted by the more mundane aspects of life, such as the household chores! My playlist for Trust Me, I Lie has an eclectic mix of tracks, including My Superman (Santigold) Sweet Dreams (Emily Browning) and Once Upon a Dream (Lana Del Ray).

What else do I do for inspiration? As I've said, in Trust Me, I Lie one of the characters illustrates classic fairy stories, so I've been re-reading some of the darker ones. You know, the stories which don't always end with a Happy Ever After, because they were supposed to have a moral? For example, Little Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge), as retold by Charles Perrault, was intended as a warning to young girls to beware of smooth-talking strangers.

I've been taking photos of locations - mainly spooky old houses and woodlands. I don't have a scene set in a graveyard yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time! I've created a new village - Raven's Edge, which was briefly mentioned in Nemesis. I've been brainstorming ideas in my notebook and discussing the plot with the Novelistas, who have an uncanny way of pointing out all my plot holes.

Inspiration? Not a problem!

But synopsis wrangling ...


Related Posts:

I Heart Pinterest (for Novelistas Ink)
Tales of Smugglers and Seaweed (the inspiration behind Breathless)
Music: Wings to the Mind


Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Getting Noted

There is a story which says Einstein never bothered to remember anything he could look up within two minutes. I like to quote this to my family when they are teasing me about my appalling memory.

The reason I can never remember anything is because my head is too full of book. Even when I'm not sat at my desk, plot, characters and one-liners are all buzzing around inside my head leaving no room for anything else. Funnily enough, when I am sat at my desk, that's when my head is completely empty. So now I write everything down.

If you've read the post My Writing Process, you'll know I write my original ideas in one of these notebooks and then keep on expanding it until I have a book. The rule is one notebook, one book. Here are my original (and very rough!) notes for The Accidental Proposal, which started out as two short pages. You'll notice my handwriting is as appalling as my memory. I'm not sure where I was when I wrote this, but I expect it wasn't at a desk.

(Photos contain spoilers!)

As you can see, I am notebook-obsessed have a LOT of notebooks. There's the shorthand notebook I keep next to my laptop for daily use, and then there's the one I write my 'to do' list in - which doesn't see much action - apparently I'm not that organised.

I have a notebook next to my bed, to jot down ideas as soon as I wake up (stop laughing). This one came from the Globe Theatre (London) along with a matching pen. Why are so many of my notebooks pink? Well, I had this theory that the pinker and more disgustingly glittery, the less likely I'd be to lose them to my kids. (Didn't work. The little bug blighters still pinch them).

I'm supposed to keep a notebook in my bag, to jot down ideas when I'm out and about. Unfortunately while I remember to write down the ideas, I often forget to put the notebook back. So as well as my own notebooks, I have several that I've stolen borrowed from other people. Which means I often receive notebooks as presents, usually from my fellow Novelistas (possibly because they're tired of me pinching theirs).

I am particularly fond of this one, although I am sure I have no idea exactly what evil plans they think I'm plotting.

So, there you have it. As much as I love technology, I'd never be without an old-fashioned notebook and pen.

Now, did I mention my pen collection?