I Write. Or at Least I Try. (Rox Delaney)

I've been so busy this past week, that I haven't had time to give much thought to what I might blog about.  That is not a good thing, because I tend to go off the deep end, if not reined in.

What have I been busy doing?  Apparently I've been creating new words.  No, not a story, but really new, never before seen or heard words. They're so new, you can't find them in a dictionary.  You see, I've been working on copy edits. 

So what, you say, are copy edits?  That's when an editor or copy editor reads through the work you've so proudly produced and finds all the mistakes that you must fix.  Mistakes?  Oh, surely not!  Pshaw.  This time I completely left out a running thread that's been in each of the last five books.  However, my editor didn't notice.  I did.  Of course Vern and Esther must appear!  If not, it could be bad luck.  Then again, it's possible I'm the only person who would notice it.  But nevermind, two short paragraphs were all it took.  Vern and Esther live on...unless my editor decides they don't. :(

Then there's that special new word. Crampled.  It reminds me of one of those captcha words we have to type in to be able to comment on the blog.  Crampled?  Really?  The hero was sorry the back seat of his sports car was so crampled.  Aha!  And you thought it was just a typing mistake meaning crumpled.  Like a crumpled tissue.  No.  I'm much more artistic than that. ;)

And why had I created never-before-heard words?  Because I was stumbling through revisions at 5 a.m. and didn't notice.  Sleep is something many writers find somewhat foreign at times, such as in the throes of a deadline.  In other words, at 5 a.m., I'd been up for 22 hours.  I'm amazed I knew my own name!

Now that I look at the clock, I realize that I'm inching into that  time period known to many as LaLa Land, and it's time to get some sleep.  That alarm will be ringing again in less than 7 hours, and I've reached my quota of new words for this week.  To be honest, I've reached my quota of words, period.

Have a lovely week!

How many hours a day do writers write?

Great question. The answer, of course, is that it's as varied as the men and women who call themselves writers.

To gather some information about this question, I went though old interviews with some well-known names. Here are their answers to the same kind of question.

Nora Roberts : I sit in front of the keyboard all day. On a perfect day, I get up and maybe work out for about 40 minutes or so – because I’m on my butt the rest of the day. I usually go up to my office by 9:00 and work for about 6 – 8 hours. And I write…check email…write some more. After dinner, I either call it a day or go back to work for a while.

Janet Evanovich : I'm always working! I usually write seven days a week for a minimum of four hours a day -- sometimes I'm at the computer from five in the morning until ten at night, eating Cheez Doodles, drinking Coke, wishing I was someone else… Nora Roberts, maybe.

Debbie Macomber: I'm an early riser, so I'm usually up by 4 a.m. (That, my friends, isn't a misprint!) I spend the first hour and a half of my day reading my Bible and devotionals and then writing in my journal. After that I'm off to the local high school pool to swim a half mile, and then home to shower and get ready for work. I'm usually at my office before 8 a.m. My office is in a lovely Victorian-style building in Port Orchard, about five miles from my home. My suite of offices includes three desks and a small kitchen/conference room downstairs and a turret upstairs. It is in the turret that I have my working desk. I employ two full-time and one part-time staff members, in addition to a personal publicist. By 9 or 10 I'm usually at my computer, working on my current novel.

Okay, I used to want to be a writer like our Starla when I grew up. She has awesome page production. However, I now want to be Debbie Macomber

In searching through numerous other interviews with famous and not quite so famous authors I found the average daily writing hours are 3 to 4 hours a day. Remember, most authors have other jobs besides writing.

I average 4 hours a day, four to five days a week. I like to write from 10pm to 2am.

How many hours do you write?