Dawn Napier
asked
Patrick Swenson:
What's your usual writing schedule? Do you write a certain word count every day or just whatever the muse tells you?
Patrick Swenson
I don't write a certain word count every day. I feel good when I have anything over a thousand words in.
My writing schedule, due to a full time teaching job, varies from day to day. Now, during the summer, when I'm not teaching, I get a lot more writing in. I'm a night owl, so I automatically revert to those "to bed at 3 a.m." and "up at 11:00 a.m." hours. So when I start writing it tends to be later in the afternoon, sometimes late evening.
During the school year, it's awfully tough to get hours in to write. To finish THE ULTRA THIN MAN, I used my planning period at school to write, and saved all my school planning for after school, before school, even weekends, which was difficult. But it worked, and I had those same 50 minutes every work day to write. I wrote the last 75,000 words in 4 months!
My writing schedule, due to a full time teaching job, varies from day to day. Now, during the summer, when I'm not teaching, I get a lot more writing in. I'm a night owl, so I automatically revert to those "to bed at 3 a.m." and "up at 11:00 a.m." hours. So when I start writing it tends to be later in the afternoon, sometimes late evening.
During the school year, it's awfully tough to get hours in to write. To finish THE ULTRA THIN MAN, I used my planning period at school to write, and saved all my school planning for after school, before school, even weekends, which was difficult. But it worked, and I had those same 50 minutes every work day to write. I wrote the last 75,000 words in 4 months!
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