Writers’ Routines

This blog is a compilation of the daily routines of famous writers and artists. It makes for fascinating reading for those of us who care about such things. Check it out to see whose routine you most closely identify with and/or whose you can learn the most from: http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/

(Definitely smart to avoid the narcotics a few famous artists found so essential to their routines (until they crashed and burned).)

What struck me immediately about the list is how many more men than women were included. I’d love to see a list of the routines of women writers and artists. Why? Because we tend to be the ones who’ve mastered writing during nap time, writing at 5AM while the family is asleep, writing while breastfeeding, writing while sitting in the car during karate practice, writing at 11PM when the family is asleep…

With unlimited time available for creative acts, anyone, with enough self-discipline, can find the time to write or be creative in other ways. But for the rest of us? We must fight for that time. I’m fascinated by all the ways we manage to carve out time for creativity.

Although I’m far from being a morning person, I find that my mind is freshest at that time, if I can somehow wake it up enough to get going, so my current time-carving project is attempting to re-set my internal clock so that I can wake early and write.

What do you do to make time to be creative?

Cindy’s Latest!

Check out my dear friend Cindy Procter-King’s new book release, Where She Belongs, which earned a 4-star review from Romantic Times:

Yay, Cindy! Visit her website for an excerpt, reviews, and more fun stuff.

It’s Try Something Different Day!

No, that’s not a real holiday. I just made it up.

I got a new computer for Christmas, intending to use it only for photo editing and the general playing-with of photos. My little Macbook Air is wonderful in innumerable ways, especially for writing, but it doesn’t like big honking jpeg files being crammed by the thousand onto its hard drive. Nor does it like Photoshop Elements.

Anyway, this new laptop is free of the psychological baggage that goes with years of less than productive writing habits such as checking email, checking email again, popping onto the internet for just a second to look up some oh-so-important fact, checking Facebook, checking Twitter, checking email again… Using it is like sitting down at a new desk, in a new office, with a lovely new view from the window, and getting busy on refreshing new work.

Because my laptop computer is my desk, office, and window all rolled into one handy little device, it’s by far my most important writing tool. I began writing on the new laptop (just because the newer version of Word fascinated me), thereby breaking my self imposed rule that the old computer would be for writing, and the new computer would be for photography and fun. And the words flowed.

And flowed, and flowed some more.

The lesson here isn’t that if you’re stuck, you should buy a new computer. Rather, it’s that it never hurts to change things up a bit. On a regular basis, try changing your work location to another room or outside, or switching from computer to paper and pen, or moving from home to a cafe. Or all three. Try writing with a fancy new pen, in a beautiful journal, or try writing on notebook paper with a pencil.

You’ll be surprised how sometimes these changes can jar you into a new feeling of creative flow. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does. My favorite place to write is in the hammock under one of our redwood trees on a warm day. But do I get much writing done there? Not generally. It’s too relaxing. My least favorite place to write is sitting at a desk, but often I can get loads of work done there. And sometimes I can’t.

I have to remind myself to be aware of how a writing session is going. Does it feel like pulling teeth? Then it’s time to try something different.

Quote of the Day: On Self-Doubt

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath

Writers are notorious self-doubters. Putting our words out into the world feels a little like running naked through a crowd. It’s a powerful act to set aside one’s fears and write boldly. What have you got to lose? Every day you don’t write is a day you might have spent writing your best work yet.

How Much Should You Write?

I know writers who regularly write 20 pages a day, while others struggle to get a few pages written daily. I tend to be a bit haphazard, some days writing a lot and other days writing nothing, but in my never-ending quest to get it right, I often ponder–what’s the sweet spot?

Stephen King, in his memoir On Writing, advises his readers to write 10 pages per day. He also says to work every day. Other writers, such as Anne Lamott, tell us to celebrate a page or two as a victory. Who’s right? I think they both are. Stephen King writes popular fiction, while Anne Lamott’s work is a bit more serious for the most part. Serious, I believe, can take longer. Popular fiction, difficult as it is to write, doesn’t get too caught up in a perfect turn of phrase. Crafting a great scene is more important to the author of pop fiction.

I have found myself most able to stay steadily productive when aiming for 8-12 pages per day. Those pages might take all day to write, or they might take a few hours, depending on how well the words are flowing. I can write 5-6 rough pages in an hour when I’m really on a roll, but it’s more realistic to expect 3-4 pages an hour as an average pace for rough drafting. If I shoot for bigger goals, such as 20 pages in a day, I inevitably burn myself out and end up needing a day of no writing here and there. If I write less than 7 pages in a day (the length of an average scene, more or less), the work tends to feel choppy and stilted.

Why does any of this matter? It helps to get a sense of others’ practices so that we can determine what is realistic in goal-setting. My current goal is 4 pages per day, simply because my day job keeps me so busy I can barely hope to get that much done. It comes out choppy, yes, but a bad scene is better than no scene at all!

What’s your daily page count goal? How do you decide?

Why Should You Attend a Writer’s Conference?

I decided to attend this year’s Romance Writers of America conference in July, and it led me to ponder a few of the reasons writers should (and shouldn’t) attend conferences.

Good Reasons:
Learn from other writers
Learn from industry professionals
Meet editors and agents (if you have a finished book)

Bad Reasons:
You want to be a “writer” by association instead of action
You want to make sure an editor or agent reads your work
You want to stalk editors and agents in the restroom

I could go on, but the bottom line is this: have you written a complete novel that you are proud of? You might learn more about writing query letters and improving your craft at a conference workshop. You might learn about mistakes made by authors in the query and submission process. You might meet an editor who asks you about your work and invites you to submit it to her.

Or you might not.

I think of writer’s conferences as writer-filled little vacations where I get to go and think about the business of writing for 3 days straight. I also get to see old friends and maybe learn something new.

Mistakes writers often make at conferences include being too pushy with editors and agents. Remember–it’s not just your book you have to sell, it’s YOU. Make sure you are behaving like a person you would want to work with throughout the arduous process of editing a novel (many novels, we hope!). Don’t rush to sell yourself or your book to anyone you meet at a conference, because really, no one wants to be ambushed that way. We writers tend to get oddly desperate when it comes to getting our work published. That desperation is poison–avoid it at all costs.

Are you going to RWA Anaheim this year? If so, I look forward to seeing you there!

My Books Now Available on Kindle: The Sex Quotient

Did you know that The Sex Quotient is a prequel to Call Me Wicked?

Let the experiment begin!

Subject/victim: Griffin Reed

Theory: Sensual pleasure makes people stupid. Stupid people don’t get promotions. Therefore must have sex with Griffin to keep competitive edge…Procedure: Lots of satisfaction for Griffin. Contain self in order to keep brainpower optimal.

Macy Thomaston has just learned the most important scientific discovery ever–intense sexual pleasure leads to a temporary dip in IQ. Surely there’s a way to leverage this against Griffin Reed, her palm-sweatingly hot coworker…and the thorn in her professional side.

Macy just needs to blow Griffin’s mind–literally–and get her promotion without a single teeny release for herself. And she’s really hoping Griffin is lousy in bed….Otherwise this whole experiment could completely backfire!

Read an excerpt!

Order from Amazon.com.