A: I queue my book playlist, and find a song to start the day or hit shuffle. Sometimes I reread the last scene, but if I do reread, I only allow myself to make nominal changes to it before continuing. Editing, as I’ve heard, is the biggest time suck to your writing process if you let it rule you before its time comes. I’m careful to not do too much of it until the book’s first draft is done.
Author
Q: How many hours a day do you spend actually writing?
A: I write until I reach a stopping point, which is usually three to four hours into the process. If I deviate from writing to do research, social media, e-mail, or blog then I stay at the computer longer and try to get in those solid writing hours.
Q: Where do you do most of your writing?
A: I sit on the loveseat in the office and write on my laptop, or I sit on the leather couch in the family room and look out the window, or I sit on the balcony and write with the breeze rifling through my hair, or I sit at the bar height dining room table and prop my feet on the swivel chair rungs. That’s the great thing about a laptop you can write nearly everywhere.
Q: What time of day do you do most of your writing?
A: After work on weekdays, middle of the afternoon on weekends.
Q: Do you write every day?
A: Nearly so. If it’s not writing then it’s editing or researching how to put the book together in all the formats I desire to publish.
Q: What’s your best advice for overcoming procrastination?
A: Starting before you’re ready to start. If you wait to be ready you might never start. If you wait until you know your story and all its nuts and bolts you might never start. Don’t worry if your idea isn’t fully mapped out because you don’t need a perfect outline. Nobody reads that except you. If you wait until all the research is done and you’re a subject matter expert (SME) you might never start. It is better to start and have to redo something than to not start. A blank page is scary, but a page with words on it already is not. You can tackle it a lot easier because the creative pressure is almost fully gone. Starting was the hardest part for me. I had a couple of false starts, but you know what? A false start is still a start. If it doesn’t work figure out why and try again.