An Average Workday

Ever wonder what it’s like to live the swingin’ life of a full-time author? Here’s how my typical workday goes.

9ish

I get up around nine, whenever the cat wants to be fed. He’s peristant, and will stalk around me on the bed, yowling, chewing on my hair, whatever he thinks is going to work. I have to sleep with a shoe in the doorway because he’s learned that slamming it is effective, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of getting up earlier.

After I acknowledge defeat and the return to consciousness, I put on a pot of coffee, eat breakfast, take care of whatever else needs to be done.

Around 10:00 probably

I start writing.

I write in two-hour blocks. Anything less and I find it hard to get into a proper authorial groove. I time myself, and manage around a thousand words an hour. My first drafts are written sparse; I like to get the bones of the story down before I layer on the meat.

Revisions take more or less time depending on what I’m emphasizing in a given story.

1:00 maybe

I break for lunch.

5:00 I guess

I stop writing after six hours. My first and last 2-hour block have been working on my primary project – currently Ghosts of Shaolin – and my middle block is writing something else. A short story, Hero Historia chapter, blog posts for the week, whatever else I’ve got going on.

I’m a morning person. Or, at least, not a night person. The later it gets, the less cohesively I write. After I’ve got my writing done, I see to the other business of writing. Social media, responding to reader emails, administrative miscellania. This goes on as long as it needs to.

Midnight if I’m lucky

The cat doesn’t have a snooze button, so I try to wrap everything up and get to bed early enough to get the sleep I need. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I have insomnia.

A regular schedule

And that’s it. Five days a week, every week. Not always the same five days; I’ve got other obligations. The normal day to day living stuff – shopping, cleaning, assorted errands – and tasks related to the film production company I co-own.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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