The long journey

 This week, I decided to take up Charlotte's question about managing time and juggling the various aspects of a writer's career. My system has changed immensely over the years. My first novel, DO OR DIE was published 24 years ago, before social media, websites,  goodreads, etc. Many of the readers I was hoping to reach didn't even have email. It's difficult to imagine how we coped, but we did! I developed a database (using D-Base) of all my friends and family who might be remotely interested in reading my books, and I added each new contact and reader to this database. I could generate mailing lists and print address labels from that database. When I released a new book, I printed postcards and mailed them out, announcing the book and, if they were local, inviting them to my book launch. The book launch was a huge way to get the word out. I also connected with bookstores within a reasonable driving distance from Ottawa and tried to arrange signings. Signings had two purposes - to sell books and to make a connection with booksellers. Sybil's advice to treat editors with respect applies equally to booksellers and librarians. They are your biggest ally.

At the beginning I was still working full time and had to find time to write as well as do all this promotional stuff in the evenings and weekends. Exhausting! Once I went down to part-time (and even more when I retired from practice entirely) I could use my off days to write and to travel around to stores, attend book clubs, and slowly learn about the internet. Email was a game-changer. As I accumulated the emails of readers, friends and families, I began to transition to emailing launch invitations and sending out announcements about signings and new books. Many of my colleagues, more savvy than me, developed newsletters and reader contact lists through platforms like mailchimp. I didn't. With my latest books, I did use Eventbrite and Facebook event invites to spread the word as well, but I still relied on group emails. I have come a long way into this technological age, but it's hard to make an old dog like new tricks!

My Facebook author page and my website are two other avenues through which I try to engage people and keep them up to date on my writing career. I cross-post info on Facebook and Instagram about book signings, launches, etc. When I look back, what a long way we've come in twenty-five years.

But the other aspect of my writing career - the actual writing - has barely changed at all. I write my first draft longhand using pen and pads of lined yellow paper. I began by squeezing writing time into the evenings once the family was settled, but since I've retired, I write every morning for three to four hours when I'm writing the first draft, saving the afternoon for the social media and promotional stuff. First I warm up my brain with coffee, social media browsing, and various internet fiddling, and then I get down to work. My goal is a scene a day, usually five to six handwritten pages. At that rate the first draft usually takes about four to six months. I do no editing until I have written "the end", and then my first task is to transcribe the illegible mess onto the computer. Initial editing occurs during this process, as well as creating a fat file of things that need to be fixed, added, changed, or deleted. Then comes all the rewrites to fix those. That process can take two to three months. I find the whole process from the first research to sending it in to the publisher takes about a year. 

Of course, I was usually contracted to one book a year, so this schedule was born out of necessity! Now that my most recent books are spread farther apart, I am enjoying a more leisurely pace, with time for other interests and fun while still getting the book done on time.

Write the Damn Book

It's been a busy winter, and it's going to be busy spring. It feels to me (Donis) that I've been going from one event to another since my last book came out last November. If it isn't a workshop I've agreed to teach, it's a review that I promised to do, or a blog entry, or a book club, or a charity event, or an author event. Left Coast Crime, one of the major crime fiction fan and author conferences, is coming up in a couple of weeks (see Barbara's entry below for an excellent overview). I'm attending LCC, naturally. I can't miss it this year for sure since it's right here in Phoenix, a mere 30 miles from my home. Of course 30 miles is quite a commute, so I'm staying at the conference hotel in downtown Phoenix--rooming, in fact, with Type M's own Charlotte Hinger.

On Friday, Feb. 26, at 1:30 p.m., I'll get to be on a panel called Historical Mysteries: Turn of the 20th Century with, Tessa Arlen, Annamaria Alfieri, and Charles Todd. Quite a company! On Saturday, Feb. 27, from 7:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m. I'm one of the host authors (along with Charlotte and Vicki Delany and 20 others) at the Discover Mystery Breakfast hosted by Poisoned Pen Press, where guests can enjoy a continental breakfast and hear about the wide variety of crime fiction published by Poisoned Pen Press. Giveaways and authors at every table.

After LCC,  I'll have another couple of book club/library events to do before the Tucson Festival of Books on March 12 and 13, where I've agreed to teach a historical novel writing workshop and appear on a panel.

LCC and TFoB and the rest are wonderfully fun (and we hope, useful) events, but they will take up days where, if my previous experience holds true, I'll get to catch up with friends I haven't seen in awhile and meet some new friends and learn a lot, but I won't get much actual writing done.

And therein lies the rub. Last Friday I had an author event in another town that took the entire day, and then I rushed home and spent the evening and all of the next day finishing a review and writing an article, both due immediately, and corresponding with people whom I had PROMISED to get back to right away, and I ended up not writing a word on my WIP for the whole time. This is not good. It's nice to be popular and in demand, but sometimes I have to pause and wonder if I'm missing the point of all this activity.

A few months ago there was a cartoon going around Facebook that showed a stick figure sitting at a desk, and another stick figure behind him holding a gun to his head and saying, "Just write the damn book!"

I want to write my stories. That's the thing I want to do and the thing I really enjoy doing. My mother taught us that in order to reach our financial goals, we should always pay ourselves first. In other words, put money aside for yourself before you even pay your bills. My mistake lately has been not doing the same thing with my writing. Do the writing first. It doesn't even have to be good, just get some words down on the page before you do anything else. That's my job, to do the writing. All the rest is gravy.