A Day in the Life of a Professional Writer

I don't think I was born a writer. Being a writer requires honing a skillset, refining, learning and developing. But I do believe I was born with a desire to tell stories and that is what is at the heart of writing anything.

I had a looong journey to learn how to take that raw talent (if you will, as it tends to sound rather arrogant saying it like that!) and turn it into something that was productive and appealing to others. Learning about the foundations of writing - grammar, punctuation, spelling and convention, took time. I made mistakes - big mistakes! Some of them still make me cringe, but it was all part of learning and discovering who I was as a writer.

I took the plunge and decided to make my living as a writer when I was made redundant from my job in 2003. It was a different world then to the one I inhabit now. There were no online magazines, ebooks were in their infancy and online writing platforms unheard of.

If you wanted to submit a book to a publisher you had to print every page out (double-spaced) and post it off with a self-addressed envelope. It was rare I could reuse the returned pages as they usually bore marks of being handled that would instantly alert another publisher to them having done the rounds more than once.

I had thick wads of returned chapters that were only good for the bin and little to show for it other than another rejection letter - it was not exactly saving the planet work!

My success did not come through books, initially, but rather through magazines - and these were the printed sort. I submitted most of my copy on CD-rom at that stage, including any pictures I had taken. It was a laborious process and you had to hope nothing became lost in the mail.

When I look back now, it seems incredible and so old-fashioned. How far things have moved on and changed! Today, though my writing process itself has not exactly changed, the way I use technology certainly has and I personally believe that this is providing far more opportunities for budding writers than what was available to me when I began.

On the flipside, I think it is becoming harder for one voice to rise above the many, but then perhaps that was always the case...

So what does a day in my life look like?

First of all, I set my hours to suit my mental habits. I am best off writing in the morning, I always have been. This is when my brain is ready to pump out words and when everything flows best. By the time I hit 2pm, I am not much good for anything creative, my brain has burned out, at least in the imagination department - for there is plenty else to do beyond just writing.

Work begins for me between 9am-10am, after the dogs have been walked and I have slipped off the fog of night. The morning walk gives me time to mull over ideas, and sometimes begin composing work in my head, though I try to avoid doing too much at this point, as it can bring on creative burnout sooner.

I have learned the hard way how important it is to take breaks to recharge and restore the brain.

I begin my writing day by working on my Kindle books. I have two prime series running on Kindle - The Clara Fitzgerald Mysteries and the Black Hearts and Bullets series. They could not be more different. Clara is a cosy detective series set in 1920s Brighton, England. While Black Hearts and Bullets is a WW2 thriller involving spies, Gestapo and the Resistance effort in France.

I can switch between the two relatively easy these days, just a quick gear change in the brain required to go from dark and moody, to light-hearted and comedic.

I set myself word count targets for the day (4,500) and once this is achieved I stop. It is important to put the brakes on at times, because it is easy to just keep going and going, until you have no more to give. Creative burnout is something all writers have experienced and it is not fun as it tends to be accompanied by writer's block. When I was younger I would just keep going and going, until I was mentally exhausted and then it could take days for me to recover and for the flow to return.

My next stage of the day is to work on things like my online articles and to concentrate on the publicity side of my writing. It isn't enough these days to just keep writing, you have to promote yourself too. This has been my hardest challenge, not being a natural for marketing. I am learning, but I would argue I still have a long way to go. I use social media and advertising tools to promote my work, and these all take time to keep up to date.

After that annoyance is out of the way (I really don't like the marketing stuff!) I switch to proofing. There is always a manuscript I am proofing, or an article. Also I regularly revise my older books to check for any errors, or to update them in some way. I have around forty books on Amazon, so, as you can imagine, this takes time.

I actually rather enjoy going back to my work and re-reading it. I have always written what pleases me, and so going back to things is far from a chore. I think that is a very important part of writing - you have to be true to yourself. You sometimes have to bend to make your material commercial (if that is what you want) but you should always be writing stuff that you like. Otherwise, it will not have your heart in it anymore.

I am fortunate to have been able to make my career through writing. I never forget that. It is not easy or without its challenges. I rarely take holidays and my life is consumed by my work, but I am not sure I would want it any other way. There are never enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to with my writing, especially when I am being strict about my time management, but that's ok too. I like knowing there is another project (or six) up ahead.

My Top Tips for Working as a Writer

1) Write every day. It could be a paragraph for a short story or book, it could be ideas for an article, or a journal entry. It is just important you show up and take the time to be creative.

2) Be kind to your creativity - mental fatigue should never be ignored. If you are working full-time as a writer, set limits on the time you spend composing and never keep going until you are burned out.

3) Love what you do. Find passion in every topic you write about. It should be fun, it should be satisfying. If it is not, why are you doing it?

4) Be open to trying different formats, whether it is traditional print publishing, or online, try it and see how you get on. You will discover what you like, and what you don't. But you can never know where the next opportunity lies.

5) Never give up. You will have many more rejections than successes, especially if you are going down the traditional publisher route. The print book market has become very closed with the rise of self-publishing via Kindle. You need to be prepared to keep going.

6) Listen to criticism with an open-mind, but do not take it to heart. We all get bad reviews - I once had a bad review because I included old photographs in a book! If there is genuine advice to take away from that criticism that will improve your writing, take it. Otherwise, don't let those reviews get you down. We cannot please all the people all the time.

7) Be true to yourself. Write what you love, not what you think will be popular, but do bear in mind 8)

8) Constantly learn. Learn to be better at your writing by exploring other writers, reading books on writing structure and improving your knowledge of the fundamentals of good writing - but do not be a slave to it. They are guidelines to improve your work.

9) Love what you do - I know, I repeated myself, but THIS is fundamental. This is what counts. And sometimes we can all be prone to forgetting it.

I wish you well on your writing journey my creative friends, it will be one that keeps you absorbed for a lifetime, and I can think of nothing better.