Author? Novelist? Newbie? Snail… We’re all a bit different. I’m sorry I haven’t been as active in the blog as I’d have liked. It’s not due to a lack of writing, that’s for sure. I’ve been working on writing Dark Nebula: Beacon and a new series of books (details coming soon) in my free time. Anything left for writing goes into my newsletter every few weeks. I’ve you’re not a subscriber, you should be. That leaves little time for the blog… sorry.

So how’s Beacon? It’s fantastic. It releases in a few days actually, on August 4th. I setup my preorder in February when I released Generations. At the time, I’d only written a few words so it was a stretch to say the least. While I knew I could get the word count based on my previous averages, I wasn’t prepared for this turning into an Epic Space Opera. When I say Epic, I mean it. It came in over 180k words!

I wasn’t expecting to write 1.5 books in that time period, but I did. Some of my newsletter readers have asked how I do it. It really isn’t as hard as you’d think. Here are the things I do to make my writing possible.

1. I write every morning before work. As much as possible, I never miss a morning and I always stop before work. Mid thought, mid paragraph, I stop. I write a few sentences describing where my mind was and where it’s going and then I walk away. I average 750 – 2,000 words per day doing this. It just depends on how early I start.
2. I write at night. I gave up Television for the most part. I still watch some shows here and there (For All Mankind, The Expanse, etc), but for the most part I don’t watch TV. It’s a massive sink of time and really makes it impossible to get creative things done. For events like the Olympics and the Tour de France, I still watch them (they’re up and playing), but I’m writing at the same time. I mean, do you really miss anything with rewind? Nope! My evenings range from 0 words on nights where we do the pool and I’m wiped from work, but on nights I do write I can usually add another 500 – 1,000 words. Not nearly as focused as the morning, but word count is word count.
3. I decompress. Playing with my 3 kids, swimming, walks, naps, reading (crazy right), you name it. I get out and decompress instead of more writing. My mind might wander to my writing from time to time, but we all need to disconnect. Even with writing goals looming.

That’s it. It’s not complicated to make time to write, you just have to prioritize it. If you’ve having trouble finding the time to write, try asking yourself if your priories are aligned with your goals. Are you watching Survivor, Netflix, or The Cube rather than writing? You’re making the conscious choice to do those things rather than write. That’s fine, but if you have writing goals you’re missing then you have to acknowledge you’re making a choice to not reach them.

I hope that helped someone. I’m off to write some more during the Olympics. Have an amazing weekend!