A Day in the Life of a Writer

Happy Monday!

I’m a little late getting this posted today. I had a book spotlight on the calendar, but it didn’t work out. So I have a plan B.

Have you ever wondered about the day in the life of a writer?  I suspect my day is similar to yours, except I might start working earlier than many of you. My work day generally begins by 6:30 a.m. Yes you read that right. J

I post on social media and try to catch up with anything I missed from the night before–I’m not a night person, so I miss a lot of posts that happened while I was sleeping. Since it’s summer and I have one of my boys living at home, I try to get the bulk of my writing done before he wakes. So far I’ve been moderately successful. I generally stop writing between 1:00 and 2:00 and exercise. After my 45 minute to an hour workout I usually get back to work until about 3:30 when I focus on family stuff.

The funny thing about being a writer is, I don’t always get to work on a book. Somedays, I work on guest blog posts, or critiquing my critique partners’ work, while other days I’m doing things like writing back cover copies. I wrote one last week for a novella that will release in a collection in October. Today, I’m going to write the back cover copy for my next romantic mystery.

This summer I am juggling several projects. For starters, I adapted one of my books to a screen play. I had so much fun! But now that it’s finished, I need to finish writing the next book in my Brides of Seattle series, as well as plot the third book in my Librarian Sleuth series. It’s a lot to wrap my brain around!

There are always things that pop up that I need to deal with, which slow me down, but that’s how life is. Right? Finally, I try to devote some time to marketing. It’s a challenge for me since it’s not my thing. I have taken multiple online classes to teach me strategies for marketing, but honestly I wish I could hire someone to handle that part of my workday. But that’s another post altogether. J

My “to do” list is a little intimidating and makes me want to avoid work all together. Do you ever feel overwhelmed with tasks you need to accomplish? What do you do to help yourself?