Hello, Book Lovers!

One of the things I love about being a writer is the freedom. For instance, I can decide to book dental implant surgery five days before my birthday and not worry about taking time off or if the date of the surgery is convenient for my boss. Yes, I know that sounds super ridiculous, I booked dental implant surgery around my birthday. I didn’t think that one through. In case you’re wondering, the surgery lasts for three hours.

Yes, three hours in a dental chair.

And, that’s not the best part. The surgery involves a titanium screw drilled into my jaw bone, and a bone graph to ensure the procedure is a success. So, my birthday present to myself was a bruised eye and chipmunk style cheek. These wonderful gifts were the result of the surgeons pulling at my face and the latter the result of the bone graph. Why am I sharing this morbid news with you? The swelling and bruised eye disappeared on the morning of Friday, 2 June. To celebrate this milestone, I decided to film a weekly vlog titled: a week in the life of a writer.

Behind the Scenes

I have to confess; I do love watching vlog style content on YouTube. It’s a sneak peek at the Behind The Scenes of a total stranger’s life minus all the boring bits. As you know, I’m no stranger to sharing vlogs, as I share the occasional travel vlog on this website. I also plan to vlog the behind the scenes of my wedding. I think it would be a great way to look back and remember the day, and the people who attended. I’ve been meaning to share what goes on behind the scenes of writing and publishing a novel but, I didn’t want to write a blog post. Taking a camera along with me as I go about my week is a much better way to show you who I am and give you a glimpse as to what I do to create a novel.

A Week in the Life of a Writer

The vlog starts off on Friday, 2 June where I meet up with Roland at Google in London, we have lunch and go to a quieter room to work. The Google office in London has a lot of rooms and cafes where Google employees can work. And, some of these places are accessible to family and friends. I performed a few business administration tasks that I had been putting off until someday. Later that evening, Roland and I went to The Breakfast Club for dinner followed by a movie. As the name suggests, the restaurant serves all-day breakfast. There is a lunch and dinner menu as well. The only unfortunate thing about The Breakfast Club is the portions are huge, even a sandwich, as I discovered.

A Mini Book Haul

On Monday, I proved that it wasn’t possible for me to walk past my local Waterstones without buying a few books, even if my sole purpose for going was to help Roland find a gift. I know, I’m book hoarder, but I do plan on reading them. I ended up purchasing the lovely paperbacks featured below. I’ve included clickable images below, just in case you love buying, reading, and hoarding books as much as I do.

How do I write?

On Wednesday, I share my process on how to self-edit a novel, and how I came to create this process. There is a lot of information about revision and self-editing but, I found the information surface level. So, I came up with a giant checklist and created the heavy fiction edit. I go into greater detail about the heavy fiction edit, here. The result of the second round of the heavy fiction edit was, I realised my novel Immunity had a few minor plot holes that needed to be resolved. Let’s face it; there’s nothing worse than getting to the end of a novel and not knowing what happens to one of the supporting characters on the villain’s team. I hate that as a reader, and I don’t want to put my readers through that experience. As a result of this realisation, I added six more scenes to my novel. Why so many? I’m writing a conspiracy thriller, so the scenes are short and to the point. And it can often take more than one scene to wrap up a plot point.

The Business of Writing

My vlog ends on a Friday, so technically it’s eight days, not a week. On this bonus day, I talk about the business of writing and how I have not created a sales and product funnel for the Indie Authorpreneur Blog side of my business. In case you are not I aware, I give writing advice over on my Indie Authorpreneur Blog and YouTube Channel. I discuss the steps I took to create a sales funnel and product funnel and how this could be applied to someone who just writes fiction for a living.