I love to write. I love when the words flow from my fingertips. It thrills me when my characters begin to talk to me and I can’t type fast enough to get their dialogue down. I adore polishing each sentence until it has just the rhythm and cadence; the snap, crackle pop I’m looking for. There’s an endorphin high that comes when a really good idea pops into my head. It’s easily as wonderful as German Chocolate Cake, a ride on an elephant or a trip to Paris.

Maybe because I came out of advertising writing, I don’t have a writing discipline problem. I got used to going to work every day and writing from nine to six so that routine seems normal to me. But it didn’t always. When I first started writing advertising it was really challenging to write all day. I remember confessing to a colleague about how slow and tortured the process was for me. And she said: “It will either get faster and easier or you’ll find something else to do.”

Obviously she was right. Writing is like running or weight lifting. You have to develop the muscles for it. It took me a year of writing forty plus hours a week before I found my groove. And now I consider it a really crappy day if I haven’t tucked myself inside my protagonist for the better part of the day.

What’s been more difficult for me in the last few years is balancing marketing writing and the real thing. Marketing writing, as I define it, is speech writing, presentation prep, web site writing, blog writing, Q&A writing, newsletter writing, answering emails etc. I only get so much writing juice every day and I have to manage my time so that I don’t squander the mojo doing marketing writing. Not that marketing writing isn’t important—but I could easily—oh so easily—have no time for the juicy stuff.

So what then is my routine like? Generally, I do my creative work first thing and then at the end of the day I answer emails and do marketing writing. But sometimes I’ll answer a few emails first thing to get myself warmed up and then get going on the books. Some weeks I get absolutely no business writing done at all and my email inbox gets clogged with red exclamation marks. Then, I’ll have to take the day off from my book and get caught up. But I try not to let that happen, because it makes my characters stamp their little feet and bang their little fists on the inside of my skull.

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