Writing Wednesday – What Does Being an Author Look Like?
18 November 2009
I can’t speak for every author, just for me. Like all professionals, I’m not only an author, but have other responsibilities as well. I’m a wife, mommy, home owner, and a myriad of other things.
The mom part especially affects how I spend my time, for better and worse. The good thing is it prevents me from getting addicted to my work, which I could easily do. Until I became published, I had no idea that I had workaholic tendencies. Figuring out how to work from home and squeeze my responsibilities into tiny windows of time was a source of stress for a while. At the moment (and I dread saying this), I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it, but it might also be because I’m not on deadline right now.
So here’s a quick rundown of what my glamorous author life looks like:
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I only have McKenna’s nap time to work. It varies from 90 minutes to 3 hours, but it’s normally on the short end of that scale. During my 90 minutes to 3 hours of work, I try to squeeze in the following:
Work e-mails. At least three to four of those a day, and usually none of them are my agent or publisher. My agent and I talk a lot when stuff is going on, and my publisher and I are in contact when a book is releasing or they need me to do edits or something, but it’s not a correspond-daily kind of relationship.
Blogging. Self explanatory.
Visiting the few blogs that I frequent. This gets cut if I have a particularly pressing schedule, but when people take time to read my blogs, I like to pay back and read theirs as well.
And then hopefully writing. Sometimes just e-mails and blogging suck up all my time, but I usually get to write at least 30 minutes every day.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have babysitters from 9am until McKenna goes down for her nap around 1pm. For the record, they’re free babysitters (I love grandparents). With what I make, there’s no way I could afford a babysitter for McKenna twice a week.
I try really, really hard to mostly write on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I end up doing e-mail, blogging, and various marketing things (interviews, responding to fans) for about an hour usually, but because I’m blessed with a big chunk of time, I try to use it for writing. A solid writing day for me is 1,000 words. A great day is 3,000. An excellent day is 5,000.
It’s not easy to squeeze everything in. I’ve blogged about this before, but when I imagined myself doing the writer/mommy thing, I imagined McKenna playing at my feet the way my dog always did. Nope. But the roles I have now are roles God called me to, and I spend a lot of prayer time asking for insight on how to do all my jobs to the best of my ability. He’s the reason everything gets done.
Happy Wednesday everyone!
Comments
Sometimes I feel like that guy on the Gong Show who was spinning plates like mad and praying someone would bang the gong so he could get off the stage! :)
Posted by Erica Vetsch on 18 November 2009
It’s hard juggling everything, isn’t it? Press on, my friend.
Posted by Lynn Rush on 19 November 2009
Such a tough balance, eh? Now that Rowyn’s a little older, he and Xoe play together a lot. Given that I have my laptop on the table beside their play area, I can squeeze in a lot of random time. With constant interruptions to play referee, of course. =)
Posted by Roseanna White on 18 November 2009