The Real, Raw, & Sometimes Messy Life of Writing

Fun fact: Stephen King makes it a point to write every day. Every. Single. Day. And from what I know, he succeeds with this goal. He’s shared this with his family, who allows him to make it a priority so he can carve out time to work even during weekends, trips, and holidays. He writes when it’s easy and still writes even when it’s not. This post and the next blog are going to discuss more fun facts, quirky habits, and messy routines of writers, including my own. 

I’m a huge fan of Stephen King, even though I’m not a big fan of the horror genre in either books or movies. However, one of the books I listened to while I wrote Fool Me Twice was Stephen King’s memoir called On Writing, and it quickly became one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time. The audiobook, which was read by King himself, was poignant, funny, and not at all what I expected from the King of Horror. It’s where I learned the fun fact about him writing daily, a habit I quickly tried to adopt for my own routine. The best I could do was a 39-day streak, however, and I admit I had to give myself grace during exceptionally busy days. Over the course of writing my first novel, I maintained an average of writing just over five times per week, a stat that still makes me quite proud even though I fall short of King’s standards he set for himself. 

During the drafting process of Fool Me Twice, I tried to write about 500 words per day. Some writers have a daily word-count goal and once they hit that mark they stop for the day. My process was a bit different. Even if I hit the 500-word goal, I tried to continue until I could finish a scene or chapter, just to keep the motivation and creative flow going, to end at a good spot so I could spend my time away from the computer thinking about where I was going next. Ernest Hemingway, on the other hand, stopped writing in the middle of a scene just so he had a starting point when he picked it back up the next day. 

It may not be something you’ve thought about before, but writers have a responsibility to their readers. This isn’t something I had personally ever thought about before diving into the writing world and discussing genre expectations with other writers and published authors. Fantasy books, for example, require a lot more world building and therefore require lengthier details. While the average novel is between 70,000-100,000 words, books falling into the fantasy category range from 90,000-200,000 or more words. Romance writers hold a responsibility to their readers to conclude with a happy ending, or a happy for now sort of ending. Historical fiction promises well-defined period details, so the author needs to have done extensive research to make the historical context believable. If you think about the genres you dive into most, you’ll likely see a pattern matching your own expectations based on the experiences you’ve had with those particular types of books. As a thriller, Fool Me Twice holds escalating tension, danger, and unreliable characters. 

The act of writing is as different for each person as are their individual personalities. Stay plugged in to read more about fun facts, quirky behaviors, and oddities in the writing processes in my next blog post. Until then, and as always, thank you for reading and supporting my own personal writing journey. 

All my love.