HAVING A LIFE AND WRITING, TOO

CHARLOTTE BOYETT-COMPO

All Rights Reserved

A family is the biggest problem a writer who works outside the home has. The job is usually an eight-hour drudgery but it’s the other sixteen hours in the day that can be the hardest to endure. Finding time to write when you’ve got a family and no job is hard enough. Finding time to write when you’ve got a job and a family can be hell.

I learned to compartmentalize my life. When I came home from work, I cooked supper and when we’d eaten, I went out to my office to write. Sometimes I’d write until 10 pm. Sometimes it was later.

My husband knew not to interrupt me. Once my office door closed, he knew he’d have to suffer through finding the remote control or where the popcorn was kept on his own. No calling me to ask. No sneaking in to ask if I was ready to come to bed. To venture into my domain was to risk bodily harm-or a tongue lashing he’d just as soon forego. He knew the writing was more important to me than the 8-4 job and I was even more serious about it because I wanted out of the ‘other’ job with a passion.

The job I had as administrative assistant at our church meant that I was being constantly interrupted. People never knocked on my door if it was closed. They simply barged in. To most of them, nothing I could possibly be doing was as important as what they needed. Interruptions were an hourly thing. If the phone wasn’t ringing, someone was standing at my desk complaining about something that needed seeing to at that very moment. It didn’t matter what I was in the middle of, I was expected to drop it and pay attention to them.

The first thing a writer has to learn is to say no. No, what you need isn’t as important as what I’m doing at this moment. No, you don’t have the right to barge in and demand my attention when I’ve specifically asked you not to. Sometimes you say it gently and sometimes it has to be shouted in order to be heard.

Having a family who doesn’t support what you’re doing can be a real deterrent because they don’t take you seriously. You must be firm with your significant other, your kids, your parents-whoever lives with you. Let them know when you close the door, that’s YOUR time. They are not to barge in and demand your time. Stress to them that unless the house is burning down, you don’t want them to interrupt your writing. You are entitled to some alone time and if in that alone time is the only time you can write, you should guard it zealously. Fight for it tooth and nail if you have to but let your family know that you expect them to respect your wishes.

Tell them no then back it up. Don’t be wishy-washy. Don’t make exceptions.)

If you’ve got kids, have them clean their own rooms. I’ve never known a kid to get seriously hurt while using a vacuum cleaner and they are never too young to learn. Not only will it save you time, it will teach them to be self-sufficient. There’s no reason why they can’t help you maintain the house in which they live. Remember: you are not their servant. Have them take out the trash. Chores are highly underused in this day and age. Bring them back and bestow upon your offspring a sense of self-worth. If they whine, whine back at them. You were a kid once. Use your experience to out-whine them.

The same goes for your significant other. He/she isn’t exempt from helping to take care of the house. Vacuuming, dusting, running errands, shopping for food is NOT gender-specific. The more your SO does, the less you have to do, the more time you have to write.

I usually cook supper when I first get up every morning so all I need to do…or Buddha Belly needs to do…is heat it up that evening. On the weekends, I might make several meals to have during the week and freeze them. It depends on whether or not I’m in a cooking mood.

How to Promote Yourself:

Have a killer of a webpage.

I get over 6000 hits on my webpage every month and I know that has translated into sales. My royalty checks keep increasing every quarter. I go on MySpace, Facebook, GoodReads, and dozens of other places just so I can get the URL of my webpage before every eye I can. I invested in magnetic car signs that have my webpage URL on them. I have that URL on my signature line on my email. I want to get visitors to the webpage any way I can because it’s there that I have the synopses, excerpts and over 700 reviews of my books. The website is easy to navigate with every conceivable search item a potential reader might need: the different books by series, genre, reading order, HEA/non-HEA, rating, an in-depth compendium. It’s over 500 pages of succinct information for anyone looking into my work.

Learn to do your own webpage. Being dependant on someone else to do it for you limits what you can and can’t do. It also places time constraints on you. If I can learn to do simply html code, anyone can. Make use of the brains you were given to think outside the box.

How to be productive:

Write.

That’s it. That’s everything.

Sit your ass down and write. Don’t allow interruptions, keep focused, don’t go surfing for the latest movie gossip, don’t go looking for blogs to pass the time away. Just write. Put your fingers on the keyboard and have at it. Once you find yourself in the groove, you’ll not want to leave.

I write anywhere from four to six hours a day, seven days a week. When I was working a full-time job, I wrote anywhere from four to six hours a day, seven days a week. If you want it bad enough, you will find the time to do it. You will make the time to do it. You will FIGHT to find the time. If it doesn’t mean that much to you, you’ll never be a success anyway so it won’t really matter.

The only way to produce work is to write. The only way to produce a lot of work is to write more.

It’s as simple as that.

By the time I left my day job, I was already making as much with Ellora’s Cave in a year’s time from six books as I was making with the church. It wasn’t a hard decision. Did I want to stay at the church and be browbeaten by people who thought of me as their punching bag or did I want to quit and make twice as much money as I was making then? As I said, it wasn’t a hard decision.

I missed getting to eat out every day. Other than that, I really enjoy sitting in my pajamas drinking an entire cup of coffee while it’s still hot. Quitting felt liberating and I had my husband’s complete support. He knew the job was slowly killing me, sapping all my energy and keeping me in a constant state of depression. He knew the only way I’d be happy was if I could put all my heart into writing so he had a 12 X 24 building constructed off our deck two years before, while I was still working at the church. He was already planning for me quitting.

Writing Fulltime:

I love it. I get up when I want to and go to bed when I want to so that means I can write when I want to. If I want to sit down and watch General Hospital, I’ll take a break, grab a bottle of raspberry tea, some chips and salsa and relax. I might watch the entire program or I might decide I’d rather be writing instead. If I can’t sleep, I get up, come out to the office and write until I’m sleepy. I go back to bed at 5 am and sleep until 9, get up and start writing again. I have the luxury of writing when and where I want to, as well, since I purchased a laptop I take with me wherever I go.