M Chandos 

Dr. Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle once described the business side of his writing as "hateful negotiations". He immensely enjoyed the creative process of writing (not the Great Detective when he got in the way of ACD's important works ie "The White Company"), and he preferred to leave all the business details to his agents, A. P. Watson and Sons. Sherlock was a money-maker and was tolerated because the stories funded ACD's "serious" writing and his world-wide tours promoting spiritualism. 

Most writers write in their spare time, after kids, bills, the J.O.B., house maintenance and the lawn. I'm retired from the big career and from my 10-year sole proprietor LLC as a private investigator. The intent was to let the career pension pay for the house, and the LLC to provide juicy experience as background for writing mysteries, thrillers and PI stories. It has, but spare time still seems to be missing. 

Time for writing must compete for my attention. My wife and I are older now, so there are more medical appointments. It's February, so tax time is looming. I'm in Colorado at 7500 ft., so there is snow to shovel, although, without the J.O.B., clearing my long driveway 50 feet to the road is less important, and it almost never needs clearing at 6 AM like it did when we were both working. 

Writing for me takes concentration. Hours. I'm not like John Stith, who got up an hour before his house to write in the quiet of the early morning for DECADES. He wrote 4+ SF novels of quite respectable quality using that personal routine. I prefer the quiet hours of 8/9 PM to midnight or later. But when you have a DR appointment at 9 AM the next day, an aging dog to walk before you leave, a chin to shave, bedtime has priority. You, well, I, have to make time. 

There are multiple approaches contributing to solving the problem. I am concentrating on several house maintenance jobs that, once done, will be gone. I use the afternoon occasional hours for organizing files, collecting story versions, saving market data, and studying Tons of downloaded resources in the form of screen-copied articles, FBI PDFs, videos, and a broad catalog of interesting topics that seem to stimulate my writing imagination. Articles about cannibal ants, autopsy surprises, Victorian crimes, famous murders, and epic robberies. I think about titles, and I have two pages of cool titles waiting for their stories. I browse quotations and steal Great Ideas. I download interesting photos of people, places, and things. 

I write about PIs in the early 60's and in present day, so I file photos according to era as well as topic. And I read. I try to read twice, first like a reader, driving through the story and enjoying the trip. Non-critical. Sometimes, though, I read like a writer, slower, sometimes backtracking a page or two to understand how a plot point was set up and then executed. And every night, for at least a half hour, I read for fun. I have a tall stack of future reads, classic SF by Harlan Ellison, non-fiction about detective work, and classic tales by Joseph Conrad. And contests. I have been a judge for both the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. For PWA, I currently have a box with at least 40 short stories that were published last year. The contest runs thru the end of March, so there will be more in the mailbox. I learn what makes a short story work by reading through many mediocre contest stories and happily discovering winning ones.

Excuse me. I see two hours unclaimed tonight. Back to my latest story about a movie collectibles conman who finds his holy grail.