Figuring Out the Logistics of Your Writing Career

The Why, Where, When, and How matter, a lot.

I write.

I mean, I write a lot. A whole lot. All day long, most days of the week. My fingers tap words out, doodle them down, spew them, cajole them, string them together like beads.

My mother-in-law has Alzheimer’s Disease and for her part of that is mind loops. She gets a thought in her head she can’t let go of and repeats it over and over.

One of her thought loops is this: you’re enjoy what you’re good at, and when you enjoy it, you do it a lot and get better at it.

So, I write. A lot. And after a couple of decades, I’m pretty good at it. I enjoy it when it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to kill me.

Here’s what a typical writing day looks like for me lately:

• I wake up and after doing the bare minimum (i.e. peeing and getting a drink), I fire up my laptop and get my ten-minutes on my novel in. This often turns into half an hour or more.
• I write a blog post.
• I write emails — either in answer to emails received or a broadcast to Ninja Writers.
• I teach classes I’ve already written and I take a bunch of notes while I’m teaching.
• I work on whatever I’m editing at the moment.
• I write some more on my novel if I have time.
• I spend some time plotting my next novel.
• I teach a class at night four days a week.

I told you. I write a lot.

I pretty much always have at least one novel I’m writing, one I’m plotting, and a third I’m editing. I blog most days. So even on a day of, I at the very least spend my ten minutes with my work-in-progress and bang out a blog post.

This is what a daily writing habit leads to. A writing life. A writing career. I don’t have to go do other work. I spend all day immersed in stories (my own and other people’s.)

Some days I can hardly believe this is my life.

Creating a daily writing habit, especially if your goal is turning that habit into a career — a writing life — is one hundred percent something that can happen. I’m living proof.

I spend a lot of my time talking to people who want writing careers. It starts with a daily habit. And that habit starts with figuring out why, where, when, and how you’re going to do this thing.

Figuring Out Your Why

Why do you want to be a writer? There are more answers here than you might realize.

Some people want to write because they have a story to tell and they just want to get it out. They don’t have any desire to be career writers.

Others are compelled to write. They couldn’t stop if they tried.

There are writers who need to earn a living, writers who have persistent muses, writers who want to leave a legacy for their children. The list goes on and on.

Why do you want to be a writer?

Me? I’ve only ever wanted to be a writer, since the moment I realized that it was a thing. I’ve got some of that compulsion going on. I also hate working for someone else. I’d rather work twelve hours a day for myself than any number of hours doing almost anything else for someone else.

This is the skill I possess that’s most likely to keep me out of the 9-to-5.

Figuring Out Your Where

Why is kind of mystical. A little bit woo-woo. Where, when, and how are concrete logistical questions.

I actually think where is the most important of all four of these questions. Having a space, even if that space is one end of your dining room table or sitting up in your bed with a lap desk, to do your work really matters.

In fact, when I talk to someone who really wants to be a writer and they know why, but it’s still not working — often they haven’t figured out a where yet. So they’ve decided they’re going to do a certain amount of work, but they go about their regular day and there isn’t any space for that work.

I have a couple of wheres myself.

I write in the mornings sitting in bed with a vintage lap desk I bought at an auction last year. It’s not a fancy where, but because it’s there, I’m able to do my first writing of the day pretty seamlessly.

I have an office in a building downtown. To be honest, I don’t use it much these days. It’s in a bank building and I’m not comfortable going into it, with Covid going on still. But it’s a beautiful office with a great river view and when I’m there, it triggers my brain to just work.

I work with my daughter a lot and because her house is quieter and less full of people, we work there often. I have a chair and a table in a nice corner of her home office space that’s my where when I’m at her house.

Decide where you’re going to do your writing work.

Figuring Out Your When

It doesn’t matter if your ten-minute teeny-tiny goal is literally all you have to give to your writing every day, knowing when those ten minutes are going to fall in your day is a big deal.

This is the part where you give your writing the same respect as you’d give anyone else’s business. If you agree to show up and do the work, show up and do the work.

You wouldn’t tell any other boss that you’re too busy or unmotivated to be at work for a scheduled shift. Don’t do that to your own work, either.

When is actually the heart of your daily habit. It doesn’t matter if you do good work every day. It doesn’t matter if you want to be there, in your where, writing. But it does matter that you actually show up.

My when is a little bit insane. I easily work 60 or more hours a week. I wake up thinking about work and go to bed thinking about work. But I wasn’t always like this. Most of my life, I had to fit writing into taking care of young children and working a day job.

Sit down and figure out a schedule for your writing work. Write it in your planner, even if it’s only a few minutes a day.

Figuring Out Your How

This is the logistics part of the equation. Here are some ‘how’ questions to ask yourself:

• Which tools will you use?
• Will you write on a computer or longhand?
• What is your work flow for novels, blog posts, and any other kind of writing you do?
• How will you make sure you don’t lose your work?

I write on Word on a MacBook most of the time these days. This is a step up from the years and years I wrote on the cheapest possible PC I could find at Wal-Mart.

I also carry a notebook and pens with me everywhere. I like to use a Rocketbook and Frixion pens in particular.

I plot my novels on a tri-fold cardboard with sticky notes.

Digitally, I’ve been enjoying Dabble lately — but it’s new for me. Other than Word, I’m a pretty spectacularly analog girl.

I blog directly into the platform I blog on. Sometimes I think I should probably write somewhere else, to protect my work perhaps, but I don’t ever. I write an outline of my posts (title, a note about a story to tell, subheads, and a take away) before I write them.

I save my work automatically to Google Drive so that I can access it from any computer and so that I don’t lose it. I also email my work-in-progress to myself at least once a week for safe keeping.

How do you do your work?

Putting it All Together

Once you know your Why, Where, When, and How — you’ll have the building blocks of your writing career. Your where might not be very fancy, your when might be just a few minutes a day, and your how might be a computer at the local library.

Trust me, I’ve been there.

Trust me on this, too, though. This is how it starts.

Create your own daily writing habit.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation, Rebel Nation, The Astonishing Maybe, and Center of Gravity. She is the original Ninja Writer.