One of the questions I was asked recently was about my writing process. “Do you outline, write in the morning/evening, etc?”

When I was working in the legal profession, I’d have to go into an office and spend most of my days there and had a lot less time to pay attention to writing for myself and working on the “business end” of publishing. But since I left working the legal profession and started working just on getting the book out (from home, about 6 months ago now), some days are real train wrecks and others are not so much of a train wreck (when I can get my act together and give myself a list!).

One day a couple of weeks ago was a train wreck day – I had to go get coffee for the plunger, go to 2 banks, pay some bills, then the office supplies catalogue arrived and I went out for a printer toner cartridge that ran out a couple of days before (to stop the printer from beeping at me!) and then Violet the cat (she’s a “rescue” cat, saved from “Death Row” a couple of months ago) was whinging so I had to pay attention to her.

Most mornings I wake up at 4.30 these days (as that’s when Violet gets up and wakes me up) and wander around the internet for a bit. I’m a member of a couple of online writing/publishing communities with user forums and I try to help out a bit, answering questions about the writing and publishing process and what it takes to get a manuscript polished sufficiently so that the manuscript is “print ready”. There’s so much more to getting a book designed than just hitting the “print” icon from wordprocessing software, so that the book looks as polished and professional as it can.

Then I try to do a bit of paperwork (going to the Post Office Box, bookkeeping, etc), then a bit of “marketing” (e.g. updating the web pages, Facebook, blog etc), then a bit of research (e.g. background info for parts of the next book or finding new marketing strategies).

And if I’m on top of things, then I try to do a bit of writing (or plot planning) in the afternoon. It’s a bit hard to do the writing part, as some of the ideas I had for my current book I excised and can use for a “forerunner” and the way I ended the book gave me the option to lead into the next one and I jump between them and my brain tries to split itself into multiple directions!

This morning was also a bit of a train wreck – I had to chase after Violet to stop her from trying to play with a rather large magpie (a rather large swooping bird that likes to get “nasty” with its beak when it thinks it’s being threatened) and the neighbour’s cat. And I’m going interstate for the weekend (high school reunion, sister’s birthday, grandmother’s birthday, and a bit of a PR trip as well to meet with someone helping me with some PR), so I had some organising to do for that. And then some household chores... combining gas and electricity companies, changing insurance companies, installing the new wi–fi modem... And I’ve been messaging back and forward with a friend who’s just got her hands on a copy of my book and she wants to know when the next one is coming out!

When will the interruptions to writing stop! Okay! Time to turn of the internet and get back to writing!

No, wait... One more phone call to make to set up another meeting for the weekend... AAGGGHHH!