Writing Life

Dear Reader,

Since everyone is still talking about New Year’s goals I have a thought on that subject, although it is bigger than just one year. My goal, shared by many authors to be able to quit our days jobs and write full time. To make enough money from our stories to support our families. There are those of us who have achieved that dream, but there are more of us who have not yet leveled up yet. But, I have a plan has to how I would spend my time if I could spend all day working on my books, marketing, email etc. I give myself little glimpses every once in a while. This week is one of those glimpses so I thought I would share it with you.

I took off time from my day job for the holidays to spend time with family. But, this last week everyone returned to work except me. I have the house to myself and a schedule set for the week of things I want to get done. So far I am on track.

Yesterday was working on audio files for Gray’s Requiem and working on The Atropi Effect first draft. Mission accomplished actually during daylight hours. I did stay up late and gave myself some downtime with movies and knitting until about 1am.

This morning hubby is off to work, the dog has been fed and outside for a little exercise, checked in with some friends and had a healthy breakfast. The plan for the next several hours is to work on dictating and editing the handwritten draft of The Atropi Effect, book three in the Maggie Gray Trilogy. I handwrite the first draft of my stories. I feel more connected that way and it’s easy to line through ideas or just mind map it all out. Then I get it into Scrivener. I have struggled with dictation in the past. I can’t just dictation thoughts straight into a recorder. But I can read them into my Scrivener program by using the dictation option on my Mac keyboard. It works pretty well. It is a learning program so the accuracy improves over time. I find that I can use dictation in this manner more easily. My goal is to use it to help me build up my skills and become more productive on a daily basis.

So today I will see how many scenes I can get dictated with some minor editing as I go.

Everyone has a story, you just need to find a way to tell yours. For more author life insights sign up for my newsletter here.

Photo by Realmac Dan on Unsplash