Love Among The Treetops Book Tour – A Typical Writers Day
On the book tour for Catherine Ferguson’s brand new book called ‘Love Among The Treetops’, Catherine describes her typical writing day.
I’m lucky enough to be able to spend most of my working hours writing – although, in common with a lot of authors, I do supplement my income with another job. In my case, that means rising early and walking to my local cleaning job at a well-known home furnishings & women’s wear store! I do this four mornings a week for just an hour and a half, and the benefits are far greater than the extra money in my pocket.
First, it’s my exercise for the day (half an hour each way) and second, it gets me up and motivated and back at my laptop, raring to go, by nine-thirty. I like the social side, too – it can be quite a lonely life being a writer, closeted away for hours on end with just the laptop for company.
Now, when I said ‘back at my laptop for nine-thirty’, I did, of course, mean ten-thirty – after I’ve enjoyed a couple of well-earned coffees and some breakfast while watching ITV’s Lorraine, which is essential viewing if you want fresh ideas for new stories (or so I tell myself).
After breakfast, I spend about half an hour trying to resist checking the Amazon rankings but failing, catching up with e-mails and seeing what’s happening on Twitter Then I’m just about ready to start writing. (Just need to grab another coffee first.)
Hopefully, I will have made rough notes on the next part of my story the day before. This works well for me. It means I know where I’m going next in the book even before I sit down at the laptop – which makes it not half as scary as it otherwise would be!
I aim to write around 1,500 words per day and usually try to accomplish this by ‘lunch-time’, which can be anything from midday to mid-afternoon! By then, I find all the emotion of living the story with my characters has taken a bit of a toll on my energy levels. (I’m always amazed by how exhausting it can be, writing on emotional subjects – particularly when your main character has hit rock bottom. You feel all the see-saw emotions she’s going through and it’s almost as if you’ve been through it yourself!)
[amazon_link id=”000826208X” target=”_blank” ]
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After that, I will stop for food and perhaps catch up on a drama on TV just to unwind a bit. Then often I’ll go for a walk.
I’ve learned that walking as part of my writing routine is really a no-brainer. The benefits are amazing. There’s the exercise and fresh air and the break from sitting at the laptop. But there’s also the magic that seems to happen when my mind is free to wander. Time and again, it’s when I’m out walking that the perfect plot twist or character will just pop into my head. If I’m having difficulty moving the story on, the perfect solution is likely to occur to me while I’m out for my walk.
By four, my working day is over, but that’s okay because I’ll be up at six next morning to do a bit of writing before I head off to my cleaning job.
You can pre-order [amazon_link id=”000826208X” target=”_blank” ]Love Among the Treetops from Amazon [/amazon_link] and will be available to buy from good bookshops from 17th May 2018.
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