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Life of a Writer
Charlotte Booth • 22 October 2021
The glitz, the glamour and the spell checker
It's not.
I wish it was, but it's not. Writers do their best work alone, in their pyjamas as they gradually lose track of time.
But that's not to say it's not a good life. It's something I feel very privileged to be able to do.
I've been a writer for at least 20 years, and I feel like my life is missing something if I am not writing a book or researching an article.
It's in my blood.
However, to get to this stage has taken years of hard work, dedication and practice. And more importantly showing up when I can't be bothered.
Often as a writer, you have to write a piece before you know where it will be published - which leads to a lot of writers self-publishing. For me, I always have a home in mind for my work even if I haven't approached them about it. Sometimes they even agree and pay me money.
Therefore, when writing without knowing where it will be placed, it's essential to find a routine to follow, to prevent drift, or worse abandoning the book altogether.
Therefore, when writing without knowing where it will be placed, it's essential to find a routine to follow, to prevent drift, or worse abandoning the book altogether.
There are four stages to writing a book, and each is as important as the next, even if they are not equally inspiring.
- Planning - You need to know what you are going to write before you start writing. When I am exploring the idea for a book, the first thing I do is write a very detailed content page of everything that I would like to include in the book. The more detail I include the easier the book is to write.
- Research - Before you start writing you need to know what to write about and this means research. For online blogs internet research is adequate, but if you are writing a book this means peer reviewed articles, scientific studies, books, magazines and even archive material. Yes it's time consuming, and often you read things which are irrelevant but if you scrimp on research the writing will be weak.
- Writing - This is the fun bit as it's when you get to put all your ideas onto paper into a coherent story (even non-fiction has to have a story). It's an opportunity to be creative and to show what you know, as well as to geek out on fascinating stuff you have found out which you know your audience won't know.
- Editing - I have a love/hate relationship with editing. On the plus side, editing your work means you have finished it and have 90,000 words to play with. It is an amazing feeling when you edit and you know you are creating a beautiful piece of work out of a rough draft. On the downside it can take ages, and no writer is ever 100% happy with their work. If you're not careful editing can take much longer than writing the book.
The only part that you need to do in order is the planning. If you get that right the writing is easy. However, in a single writing day, I can be working on any combination of the other three, depending on where I am in the book, and my mood. So I could spend a week researching something that my knowledge is sketchy on, and then the following week writing it up, or I do the two simultaneously, writing and reading at the same time.
I tend not to edit the work until it is finished, although sometimes I feel the need to check flow if I feel I have lost direction a little. This normally happens when I am three quarters of the way through a book. It is a mini edit, just to get a feel of the flow and the story thread running through it, but of course it's great for identifying gaps, weak points and spelling mistakes.
I think editing the previous day's work before you start working today is a waste of time. However, one of the beautiful things about being a professional writer is that there is no right or wrong way to do it. You do what feels right to you.
Through my 12-week From Brain to Book
programme I am fascinated at the different way each author chooses to work. As long as the result is the same (a finished book) it really doesn't matter what tools you use to get there. If you are embarking on the journey of writing a book and don't really know where to start, drop me an email
and we can chat through the options available to help you find your writing routines and style - whatever it takes to get your book finished.
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