The Love of Writing

Today, my guest is Kris Bock, who writes romantic suspense with Southwestern landscapes and outdoor adventures. As Chris Eboch, she writes children’s books, include The Eyes of Pharaoh, a mystery set in ancient Egypt; and The Well of Sacrifice, a Mayan historical adventure. Here she discusses what it really means to be a full-time professional writer.

Leave a comment today and Kris will pick one lucky person to win an electronic copy of RATTLED (your choice of PDF or e-book file) and another person to win an electronic copy of her children's mystery THE EYES OF PHARAOH. Note in your comment which you would prefer.

And while Kris is here, I'm over at Savvy Authors talking about my upcoming workshop on dialogue.

Welcome, Kris.

People who are not writers may have the idea that writers spend most of their time writing. I suppose some lucky ones do. But I realized at the end of March that I hadn’t been working on a new novel for three months. In December, January, and February, I had edited two novels, published two books, started publicizing those books, written a few articles, done dozens of critiques, taught two four-week classes, and attended two conferences. I had been as busy as ever in my life, but I hadn’t been writing new work.

Publicity is important—if people don’t read my books, I won’t sell enough to be able to keep writing them. But if I don’t create new books, I won’t have anything to promote. All those other writing-related jobs are important too—teaching, paid critiques, writing articles—because some (most) years they pay more of the bills than novel sales do. I do enjoy helping other people get closer to publication, too.

But I don’t want to be a teacher first. I want to be a writer first. That means finding the time to write.