What exactly does the life of a semi-retired writer look like?
I generally go to bed fairly late, so I sleep in until 7:00 or 8:00. Once I get my chosen bottle or cup of caffeine in my hand, it’s off to check email and post on my social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, and Livejournal for writing prompts). After that, I generally spend a few minutes (ok 30 maybe) putzing around on Alexa Answers, the website where you can answer questions and have them read by Alexa the next time someone asks that particular question. I try to limit my time though, because it can be addictive looking up all those answers to all those esoteric questions.
I usually work on whatever I’m writing at the moment for most of the day if I’m not physically working at my day job, say 11:00 to 5:00, break for dinner, then 6:00 to 8:00. I usually stop around 8:00 because that’s when my friend from Iowa (Hi, Bar!) and I chat. we’re about the same age and she lives alone so we check in on one another every night and shoot the breeze about what we’ve been doing all day. She has an interesting job with crazy people that’s always good for a laugh. In between chatting, I’m either scrolling on Facebook or finishing up whatever I was writing (or maybe updating my websites, like now). Then, around 10:30 or 11:00 (depending on whether or not I have to get up at 7:00 to go to work), I’ll head on up to bed and take a shower (or save it until the morning if it’s too cold to get wet). I usually read a little before I fall asleep, too.
What sorts of things am I writing, you ask? I’m working on Book 2 right now, which is at the “OMG just get it down on the page” stage of writing. I’ll go back later and edit the hell out of it. I’m also tweaking Book 1, even though an agent has it at the moment. After all, I can always send her an updated version if I think of some really fantastic plot twist. I’m also pretty much always working on one of my romance plot outlines for Valhalla Publication. She pays me peanuts but it will buy a week’s groceries most of the time…well, maybe not lately since food prices have skyrocketed down here… And when the other job is active, which is intermittently, I do voice acting for the guy who’s putting together a language bundle. I just read the English parts and he has someone else who reads the foreign languages. That usually only takes 30 minutes or so for the initial read-through and then maybe another 20 minutes for re-takes when there’s vibrations or noise in the background or clicks or stuff. He pays better, but with such short amounts of time, it doesn’t add up to much so far. I’m hoping he will start producing his packages faster so I get more work.
Well, that’s about it for A Day in the Life of a Writer. If you see anywhere I can improve, feel free to comment!
