A Day in the Life of (This) Indie Author

12 a.m. – Lie down to go to bed.

12:15 a.m. – Spring outta bed to write down answer to annoying plot question plaguing me for days.

12:30 a.m. – Go to sleep.

7:30 a.m. – Alarm goes off for day job. Boo.

8:30 a.m. – In rush hour traffic. Radio announcer says quote from famous person that’s really cool and fits life philosophy. Repeat to myself until I can look it up at work.

9 a.m. – Remember last part of quote. Google knows the rest. Yay! Find out it’s part of a much bigger quote that goes against why I liked it. Dammit.

9:10 a.m. – Start working.

9:20 a.m. – Make mental note of a fun character name based on a co-worker’s name.

9:30 a.m. – Remind myself, “I need money to live, I need money to live” while reminding myself my writing is not making money.

9:35 a.m. – Do some actual work.

11:11 a.m. – Is it lunch time yet?

12 p.m. – Lunch time! Check book page for reviews. Sigh at lack of new ones. Tweet to followers (mostly other indie authors) about the importance of reviews. Scroll through social feed, joining book trains and dropping #ShamelessSelfPromo links on other people’s posts.

1 p.m. – Shuffle back to desk.

1:15 p.m. – Think about a conversation between 2 characters in my WIP. Write down catchy line to end the chapter.

1:20 p.m. – Back to work.

2:06 p.m. – Check the clock. Groan at how much more time there is before going home to work on writing.

2:47 p.m. – See above.

3:18 p.m. – See above.

3:54 p.m. – Check sales page. Glare at big zero under Orders. Curse the publishing gods.

4:35 p.m. – Co-worker with name that inspired a character comes over to talk. Struggle to remember their actual name. End up going with, “Hey you!” and double finger guns.

5:20 p.m. – Quietly get stuff together to leave promptly at 5:30 p.m.

5:23 p.m. – Close enough. Leave office.

5:45 p.m. – Back in rush hour traffic. See bumper sticker that inspires idea for book title. Frantically search for something to write it on and settle for my palm.

6:05 p.m. – Arrive home.

6:15 p.m. – Boyfriend asks what we should have for dinner. Find plenty of ingredients – all require prep and cooking. Order pizza.

6:20 p.m. – Bounce idea for character conversation from earlier off of boyfriend. Get a lot of questions I don’t have answers to. Sigh. At least the last line is still good.

7:15 p.m. – Eat pizza while watching favorite sitcom. Laugh at the great writing and think of better comebacks for the weaker jokes.

8:03 p.m. – Friend texts to say she finished my recently published book. Loved it! YES. Says she noticed the word “shrugged” used a lot. Hmmm. Run to laptop to do a “find” of “shrugged” and get 35 hits. Face palm.

8:05 p.m. – Hit up thesaurus to figure out alternatives for “shrug” (not many). Have to get creative. Replace half the instances, and reupload a new manuscript for the ebook and paperback.

9:05 p.m. – Think about working on new WIP. Crack knuckles and open copy doc. Wait for fingers to react to brilliant ideas that come to mind.

9:09 p.m. – Nothing comes to mind.

9:10 p.m. – Remember what people say about working through writer’s block. Just start typing.

9:11 p.m. – Start typing, “This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.”

9:29 p.m. – Go back to judging popular TV show. 

10:09 p.m. – Find paper with catchy chapter-ending line. Hooray! Type it into copy doc. Try to make it snappier. End up making it worse. Decide it was crap in the first place. Decide I’M crap. That’s it! Give up writing. Start watching the news, mumbling there are way more important things that need attention.

11:11 p.m. – Check the clock (why is it always 11:11??).

11:20 p.m. – Get into bed, patting myself on the back for having more time to read before getting tired.

11:30 p.m. – Get tired.

11:38 p.m. – While drifting off to sleep, think of better ending line for chapter. Get up to write it down, and come up with a totally better, way more awesome argument that ramps up the conflict. Boyfriend agrees. I AM AWESOME! Decide to stick with whole “writer” thing after all.

11:59 p.m. – Check book page for new reviews. WHY DOES NO ONE LIKE ME??