A Writer's Day

Thanks to Carolyn for yesterday's entertaining post. Remember, you can enter the drawing for her book through Friday, so if you haven't left a comment, scroll down and leave one under her post. And PLEASE pop over to SOS Aloha, where I was interviewed.

So, what do writers do all day? (Aside from sitting around in comfy clothes?) Here's a quick recap of all the things that count as 'writing' but don't get words on the page that I dealt with yesterday. This doesn't include the normal things like laundry, cooking, cleaning (ha!) or other non-writing tasks.

Check email – a given. More on dealing with it later.

Blog crawling. This falls under 'education and promotion' most of the time, and I don't hit all the blogs I subscribe to every day, nor can I leave comments on all of them.

Writing the next day's blog. Entails thinking of a topic, writing, uploading, looking for pictures, formatting. Tell myself to get farther ahead than one day.

Try to tweak Blogger template for the Retweet button.

Post a copy of yesterday's blog to the Savvy Author's site, since there was interest.

Discovering there's a "new" feature at the Kindle Boards that I haven't taken advantage of, so set up profiles for two of my books there. Not exactly sure where to link them, but here they are: What's in a Name? and When Danger Calls.



Yahoo group wants opinions on dealing with group support at Twitter, and how to keep the email posts from getting out of hand. To trim or not to trim.

Respond to blog comments (although when I have a guest, it's not as pressing)

Open spreadsheet of writing expenses. Record data from receipts on desk. Move receipts to file.

Getting the email from my publisher saying she got the contracts, but I'd neglected to sign them. Yeah, I'm not always 100% on task. I was engrossed in adding the series name to the book titles and totally forgot to go to the last page and sign them. Compose an apologetic email to her.

Another email from someone wanting a good resource for police/firearms information. Respond by directing him to The Graveyard Shift blog and crimescenewriters (another Yahoo group).

Email from All Romance eBooks saying they now support .mobi format. Open Calibre to add that format to my books. There's an update. Wait for that to download. Then update all my books/stories so they include the .mobi versions. Post to FB and Twitter that they're now available in that format. (Find them here)

Respond to someone who's reading an ARC of Where Danger Hides and has nice things to say.

Discuss crit partner's feedback on the final scene in the book.

Other stuff that has to be done, but not every day: keep track of guest bloggers, remind them to send posts, format, upload, etc. Also, I count doing crits as 'writing stuff' because it helps hone the craft.

As for the 'real' writing – if you read my post Monday, you might have guessed that I'm in the first step of edits of my next manuscript. This is the 'easy' part, because there's not a whole lot of concentration required. Pick a crutch word. Enter in the "Find" box in Word. Then go through 235 clicks to see if there's a need for that many instances of 'could.' Repeat for 'just'. And, I was going to go into more detail about my editing process, but I think that'll be tomorrow's post.

And I can't imagine what life would be like if I had kids and/or a day job, like so many of you. I bow to your expertise.