Short Story Library: Poetry, Micro Fiction, Flash Fiction and Short Stories

Where do you find your time to write?

Very few get to be full time fiction writers. For most of us, fiction is a hobby we try to squeeze in every chance we get. Essaywriter.nyc was a great excuse to put normal obligations to the side for one full month and just focus on writing but now, where do you justify the time to spend on your writing? Personally, I spend about one hour a day on my fiction writing. That is about all I get based on the balance of full time job, home life and various other responsibilities (reading submissions eat up a lot of time).

I have tried the whole get up an hour early in the morning and sit down and write an essay. It did not work for me. First I needed to make my coffee, then check the sports section of the news, and then it was time for a refill and right about when I was comfortable to start in, it was time to shower and get to work.

I have tried spending my lunch hours at the office on my writing. This helps but generally I get interrupted every five minutes with an email, a phone call or someone stopping over. Not very easy to just focus on essay writing and in my opinion, the writing shows lack of focus. A few times I left my desk with pen and paper and went to a coffee shop and tried to write. It went well but my notes are still in the notebook I brought with me. Never have the time to convert the notes to be on the computer (or I cannot read my own writing when I go back to look at it later).

When I get home from work is a good time to write. I usually can get a few minutes in but that is after the usual greetings and changing from work clothes to comfortable writing clothes. Once I sit down I have a good thirty minutes before either my dogs get hungry or I do in which case it is time for a break.

After dinner is done and the dishes cleaned, I try to write essays for another thirty minutes all the while fighting the temptation to just relax after a long day. Sometimes a glass of wine helps (or hurts depending on how much) the writing process at night but again, it’s all a fight to stay motivated and the urge to go to the couch and just relax. The TV is nearby my writing space which hurts sometimes but such is life. I do not have kids I can only imagine how hard it is for those of you with kids to sneak in a few minutes to write with everything else going on.

Do You Multitask Your Writing?

I am horrible at multi tasking. I can do one thing, and even then I think I do it poorly. I am amazed when I hear writers who have three or four novels being written at the same time and still manage to knock out a short piece of writing in their “down time” – amazing. When I wrote my first novel I was focused on it. In the world trying to build characters, plots, scenarios, etc… if I didn’t think about my book for a few days I sort of forgot where I left off and really needed to reread what I had written over the last few days to ramp back up. How do you all do it?

To me, I can have only one work in progress at a time anymore then that my work suffers and I can tell. Not only does it suffer but my writing time suffers as there is a learning curve between switching stories and trying to get back to where you left off if you have too much going on. More importantly, how does anyone who keep so many balls in the air every really get anything done? With only one novel it took me roughly two months to write and then two months to finish the first draft. Essay writers still will need another two months before I could consider it done. If I had a few of these going at once, I would think that timeline is doubled or tripled.

In the last writing I talked about where do you find the time to write in your daily life. Responses showed time is limited but some gets carved out. Just a little scrap of time, carved out to write and to me, having three or four pieces of writing to advance would be mind boggling. Which one do you chose? Do you write the same one day after day and then switch over at some point? Try and spend a few minutes on each? Again, I don’t multi task. I do one thing, and do it poorly. How do you do it?

Self Publishing and Print on Demand (POD) – Learn the difference

Many times I hear people use self publishing and print on demand interchangeably, they are not the same. Self publishing is a business model compared to traditional publishing. Self publishing involves the author putting up their own money and working on their own money and time to sell their books without any assistance, where as traditional publishing involves trying to get an agent or a publisher to take your writing and publish it for you on their expense.

Print on demand has nothing to do with the business side of publishing, it is simply a technology used in publishing. This involves the printer receiving the writing and storing it in electronic format. When essay writer puts an order in for a book, a copy is printed off at the time it is ordered, hence, it was printed upon demand. This is compared to the more traditional model where a publishing company will order a large number of books to be published at one time and books are printed in editions or series and stored by the distributor.

There are pro’s and con’s to any form of publishing and it really depends on what is best for you. Many self publishers use the print on demand (POD) technology because it requires no money upfront (in general) and also no room to store books. However, you earn less money per book if you go the POD route instead of ordering in bulk, but if you order in bulk, you need to put the money upfront for your order.

Like I said, there is no right or wrong way, just different ways but to keep apples to apples: POD is a printing technology and is an option compared to traditional printing – a set number of books printed in one edition upfront. Self publishing is a business model whereby the author publishes their own writing and tries to sell it on their own, compared to using a traditional publisher which handles everything from printing, distribution and assists with sales and marketing.