My Writing Journey (continued again)

After the publication of my first novel, Retirement Homes Are Murder, I retired to focus on writing. Previously while still working, I had written my manuscripts using a concept I adapted from Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way. Julia recommends writing three hand written pages the first thing every morning (Morning Pages) as a way to get the creative juices flowing. This can be anything: a shopping list, a journal or whatever is on your mind. I adapted this concept as a way of writing three pages of a manuscript every morning. I’d review where I left off and write three hand written pages to continue the story. Then when I came home from work, I’d do an editing pass and enter the three pages into the computer. This produced two type-written pages. If you do the arithmetic, after 150 days, I’d have a rough draft for a 300-page novel.

 

Once I retired, I started writing directly into the computer. Being a morning person, I’d write all morning and then exercise and eat lunch. This was the program I followed during a very productive writing period from 2007 into 2015. During my Morning Pages days and my productive retirement days, I completed over 30 manuscripts, of which 17 have now been published.