Every Monday from today into the foreseeable future, I will be sharing the days of a handpicked bunch of wonderful authors, who will be telling us all about their daily routines as writers. I adore reading these kind of posts (I am unbelievably nosy), so I hope you will too...First up is Julie Stock, an author of contemporary romance from around the world: novels, novellas and short stories. She indie published her debut novel, From Here to Nashville, in February 2015 and has just published her second novel, The Vineyard in Alsace. A follow-up novella to From Here to Nashville is also in progress, as well as the next novel.
Check out Julie's day here...
I have a dedicated writing space with a desk and I sit alongside a window, which makes it a very light and airy place to write. My desk is pretty well-organised, with my laptop in the middle and two piles to the left of me – one to my immediate left for the current project I’m working on, and the other for everything else I have to do. I keep a list of what I’m supposed to be doing to try and stop myself from procrastinating!
I only work on one project at a time but I may have several things going on at a time. At the moment for example, I have just finished the first round of editing a novella sequel to my first novel From Here to Nashville, and I was only working on that during that time. However, I recently finished the first draft of my next full novel and sent it off for its first assessment. And while it’s away, I’ve been editing my novella. Now that both of those are ‘finished’ for the moment, I’ve moved on to a new non-fiction project.If writing a first draft, I try to write between 1 – 2,000 words a day. I write in Scrivener and this allows me to set a target for the day and the counter is set up a bit like a traffic light, gradually turning green as I progress through my words. This is very satisfying! I try to do my words before I do anything else because as many writers will tell you, you feel so much better when you’ve written them and no longer have to worry about writing them.
If editing, I try and edit for an hour each day as a minimum but I really have to make myself do it. Setting myself a minimum makes it bearable and if it’s going well, I can choose to do more.
If I’m about to start a new project, I try to plan out at least a basic outline of the story to save myself having to do endless rewrites further down the line. I also spend a lot of time on developing my characters and their backstory before I get started on the story otherwise, they will come back to trip me up further down the line.Once I have done some planning, written some words or done some editing, I have to turn my head to all the other jobs requiring my attention. As a self-published author, that may involve writing blog posts or articles for both my own website and other people’s. I’m also the Deputy Editor for the quarterly newsletter of The Romantic Novelists’ Association and regularly write articles for that, as well as supporting the Editor with all the other jobs she has to do.
I also tend to my social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) or things that need doing on my website. I spend a lot of time working on and thinking about marketing for both my books but especially my latest one, The Vineyard in Alsace, as well as promotion, ads, sales etc.
Apart from that I might be preparing for upcoming talks, liaising with cover designers, printers, editors and so on. The list of jobs is endless but I do really enjoy having overall control of both my writing and my publishing career.
From time to time, I go to meet up with other writers either in the RNA, or The Society of Authors of which I’m also a member because working on your own all the time can be a bit lonely otherwise. Likewise, I sometimes go to workshops or conferences.
The only thing I find difficult is switching off from it all when my business is in my own home. Still, my teenage daughter and my husband usually make sure that I get away from my desk for the evening when I like nothing better than to make a lovely meal, drink a glass of wine and watch a good film.
Thank you so much, Julie, for appearing on the first Day In The Life of An Author feature! Make sure you guys check back next week for another DITL feature <3
If you are a writer and would like to share your day as part of this feature, just pop me an email and we can sort something out...
Check out Julie and her books here: https://julie-stock.co.uk
https://twitter.com/wood_beez48
https://www.facebook.com/JulieStockAuthor
Until next time :)
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