Draft Days

I'm heavy into the draft stage of my next novel, which means I generally walk around in a distracted state, mutter to myself constantly, and leave the house with food in my hair. Draft Days are distinguishable from Outlining Days and Editing Days mostly by my ability to carry on non-writing related conversations, which, during Draft Days, is fairly non-existent.

People who don't know the writer's life are often baffled by my state. It can't be that difficult, can it, to write a couple thousand words a day? I bet I do that much in email on a daily basis, they'd say. You get to sleep till noon if you want to!, they crow with as much scorn as they do envy.

Well, for the uninformed, let me take you through an average Draft Day:

9:30ish – wake up with boyfriend's alarm. I was dreaming about my heroine. She was on a boat. Why was she on a boat? Should I put in a nautical sequence? Mystery is solved by looking out the window and realizing its raining buckets outside, and my subconscious was merely trying to prepare the ark.

9:35-10:35 – make breakfast and complete domestic chores, kiss BF goodbye as he leaves for his alarmingly normal job at 9:55. Spend 20 minutes in the shower trying to work through heroine's mindset for current scene – inspiration strikes, making me flee the shower with soap in my hair to locate the pen and paper I keep on my nightstand, which is filled with scribbles from the dialogue lines and thoughts that woke me up last night. They are mostly illegible.

10:40 — check Twitter.

10:45 – check Facebook.

10:50 – check Twitter again, see if anyone responded to my witty observation/obligatory animal picture/blog-giveaway nudge.

11:00 – head out the door. I have recently started meeting up with a few similarly Drafting friends, at coffee shops around the city. I find it much easier to force myself to work when I'm sitting in an uncomfortable chair, have a ready supply of coffee and people who are working nearby to shame me into getting down to business. Also, human interaction saves my sanity.

11:30 – since its raining we chose the indoor coffee shop. Get coffee, sit down. Find outlet. Plug in.

11:35 – check Twitter.

11:40 – check Twitter.

11:45 – check Twitt… oh, you get the idea.

11:50 – ok, seriously totally seriously have to start working. Just let me check Twitter one last time…

12pm-4pm — Work. Type until my fingers feel funny. Oh, of course I occasionally stand up to stretch my legs, and get coffee, but once my head is in there, its in there. It has to be. There's a deadline coming up. And yes, I did get on the internet, but it was to check a fact on Wikipedia. And maybe check in on Twitter, but I wasn't posting. Nu-uh.

4:15 – I am bleary. My brain is still tuned to what will come next in the story. I know I could write more, but I have no faith that it would be any good, I must work out what happens next in my head first.

4:17 – drive home. Realize it's my turn to make dinner. I go to the grocery store. Buy a pie.

4:45 – at home, go up to my office. Do any number of the administrative tasks that come with having a book release in 6 weeks, including but not limited to: talking to agent/talking to in-house publicist/writings blogs/arranging blog visits/arranging bookstore visits/arranging review copies for reviewers/running a Facebook contest to drum up interest/work on the book trailer/looking up advertising rates, debate which is most worthwhile/creating pitch documents for possible new series.

6:30 – check Twitter

6:35 – have about an hour before BF gets home. Somehow I have already eaten half a pie.

6:40 – I begin to read over what I wrote earlier today. Review and refine. Some writers prefer to do this in the morning, after a night's worth of distance and perspective, but I prefer to write early, and review before I go to bed, so I know where to begin in the morning.

7:30ish – BF home. Appalled that I didn't save him any pie.

8pm – Stop working for the day. Need some primetime TV to decompress my brain. Now, you'll notice that I didn't do anything particularly strenuous – I didn't run a marathon, or perform brain surgery. All I did was sit in a coffee shop, drink some java and eat some pie. But by all that is holy, I am EXHAUSTED. The mental stamina it takes to focus on one story for a few hours drains me, and now, it's time to veg.

9:30ish – Go to gym. Lethargically work the elliptical while reading on my iPad. But the brain, having been down for an hour or so, is starting back up again. I am struck by inspiration and since I don't have a pen and paper, try to type out my idea on the iPad so I hold onto it, while still on elliptical. It ends up mostly illegible.

10:30 – 12ish – Interact with BF. Like many houseplants, he only requires attention once a day or so. This involved me watching him kill people in Call of Duty, and then our shared guilty pleasure, The Jersey Shore.

12ish – Go to bed. Brain, however, is still working. Make sure pad of paper and pen rests on the bedside table, in preparation for the half dozen times that I will be waking up with ideas to jot down.

12:01 – But not before I check Twitter one last time…

Well, I have a lot of drafting days in front of me this week, so I'll be super busy. I recommend popping on over to Ashley March's March Madness Blog – where I'm guesting today! — for lots of good giveaways, including an Advanced Reader Copy of Follow My Lead! Definitely worth the trip.

Until next week – happy reading everyone!