What is it you DO all day?

Five Things I Do as a Professional Writer™

Except for a lucky few, writing has never been considered a “real” profession. Nearly every writer has a day job that is the one they put on their arrival forms when they land in foreign countries (Why do we do this? What is your government going to do with that info?)

As someone currently taking a 2.5 month leave from my so-called “real” job to write, I’ve received questions ranging from, “How do you spend eight hours a day writing?” to “Are you actually writing, or just loafing around the world with fancy cocktails and an indulgent companion?”

So I figured I’d demystify things a little. Share how I actually spend my time, in case anyone wants the writing life for themselves and is wondering about the practicalities.

First, yes, I am loafing around the world right now, but I’m doing so purposefully. I’m writing a fantasy series, and each of the places I’m visiting has a part to play as inspiration. Books One and Two are complete and in various stages of editing, and I’m ~38,000 words into Book Three. I want to have the entire series completed before attempting publication, to avoid plot holes I can’t write my way out of later. Also, as any fantasy reader will tell you, nobody wants to wait two years for the sequel.

Which takes me to the first of the Five Things I Do as a Professional Writer™

1. Reading and research

I read a novel a week. Which novel depends on what the moment requires. For instance, I read a lot of Beat writers for Her Golden Coast, my upcoming novel which is a queer, feminist twist on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. My WIP story after that “blends elements of realism and the fantastic” which is characteristic of many of my favorite writers, including Kafka (who quit his “real” job so he could write, btw). 

(Below: Giant rotating metallic head of Kafka in Prague. I can’t think of a more appropriate tribute. When I die, make mine gold).

But I wasn’t in Prague just for Kafka. I went there to see Sedlec Ossuary, a strange and unique church decorated entirely with human bones. My story, like all fantasy stories, blurs the lines between the living and the dead to create the sense of the supernatural. I’ve been reading and researching cremation and burial rituals in Europe and Asia for a long time, ever since a professor in Oxford told me that the differentiation between civilization and savagery is how we treat the dead. Imperialist? Yes. It’s Oxford. Anyway, I’ve had a long-time fascination for how various religions and cultures treat human remains.

(Below: Where’s Grandpa? He’s a curtain now).

2. Writing and editing

Our flight from Srinagar to Delhi was delayed, as was every other flight that day. The airport was crowded, hot and loud, but I had an indefinite length of time to kill. I wrote sitting in a straight-backed chair while listening for announcements about our flight. I wrote on the airplane, on all the many airplanes. I wrote at night, taking advantage of jetlag. A long time ago, I couldn’t write unless I had my specific notebook and pen, and it was a beautiful, quiet place. To become a professional, I needed to change that. I wrote about how I did that here.  

One of the good things about having multiple books in the pipeline is when I’m truly too drained to write, editing Book One can be a great break from writing Book Three. And if I’m truly feeling uninspired, I stop trying and do one of the other things on this list instead. 

3. Improving my craft

There are many ways to learn about craft beyond an M.F.A. Books on craft, like Wired for Story, or First you write a sentence can help you hone your prose at a line-level. Classes and workshops help (sometimes, they can be hit or miss). But nothing beats doing the work yourself of reading books critically to understand why something is or isn’t working. Doing it with books you love can be its own pleasure. For instance, here I am trying to understand how author Andrew Sean Greer does characterization through setting, by describing what the character sees instead of describing the character himself. 

4. Navigating the industry

Some other day, in another post, I’ll talk about how I innocently expected that once I was agented, the publishing industry would work its magic for me and all I had to do was focus on the content inside the book. But these days, if you want to be an author, whether traditional or self-published, you have to learn the ropes of publishing. 

Did you know, for instance, that a traditionally published author has little say over their book category, cover or title? These are carefully chosen by marketing professionals based on what will look good in an Amazon thumbnail, which niche it’s likely to succeed in, and how they can sell it. This is usually a good thing. Just because you can write a book doesn’t make you the best at marketing it. 

Here are some of the many things I’ve been doing in the last few weeks: 

• Reaching out to other authors for blurbs for my upcoming novel, Her Golden Coast.

• Reading back covers, blurbs and ads for books like mine, to see how other authors talk about their work, and what they emphasize.  

• Navigating how covers and interiors work, e.g. the various page sizes and paper quality options and how that determines printing costs in various countries, as well as eventual royalties.

• Learning how distribution works, to get your book into actual stores (not every store will carry your book, especially if you’re new).

• Helping with tech support (group aliases and video conferencing) for a group of writers who want to help each other grow via feedback. No writer succeeds alone.

• Discovering and blocking the endless scams on social media offering to get me a gazillion followers, post a pretty picture of Driving by Starlight on their Insta, or review the book, all for $$$ that would be both unethical and pointless. Most of these things don’t result in sales. 

• Writing on Substack and reaching out to you, dear readers.

Is this a lot to handle? Yes, which is why the fifth thing on the list takes up a fair bit of time but is a worthy investment. 

5. Organizing my time, budget and documents…

… so I can get more efficient at the first four things.

I’ve been organizing my process to make it more efficient, so that I can have a nice, working backlog and publish a book a year (even with a full-time job). This means creating process charts and refining them based on experience, organizing the bazillion documents, emails and photos, and experimenting to see if I can do better. 

For instance, here’s a draft of a process that could get me a book a year via self-publishing, but provides no guarantees on traditional publishing timelines, which can be 2 years after a book is accepted.

While I do this, I question my own goals. Is it financial success I want? How much do I care about traditional publishing? What I want, what I have always wanted, is to be free to tell the story I want to tell, the way I want to tell it, and to write stories that resonate with people. For the longest time, I thought the way to do that was to earn permission by being commercially successful, so that someone would, one day, tap me with the Credibility Wand and say, Yes, you’re a professional writer. Now, I know better. Nobody has a Credibility Wand. We’re all just fumbling along.

A novel is meant to be a conversation, and writers are a community who, individually and together, shape society by showing a path or perspective not known before. So I’m happy to share what I’ve learned, and learn from you as well. If any part of this interests you and you’d like to hear more, just let me know!