Day In the Life: Gillian Bronte Adams

I don’t know that I have a “typical” writing day yet. Right now, every day is different, and I never really know what the next will hold. So, here’s a glimpse at a day last week when I was in the midst of a KILLER scene that did NOT want to be written while on a writing retreat (aka taking advantage of a quiet house while pet sitting for my sister who was on vacation).

7:40 AM: I wrote until almost 2:00 AM last night (morning?), so I was slow to wake up. That’s the beauty of having a not incredibly strict schedule since I can work when I work best! (Which is often between the hours of 10 PM and 2 AM.

8:00 AM: I feed the cats and grab coffee and my Bible. Much needed fuel. For me, writing begins with prayer and whatever passage of Scripture I am working through at the moment—right now, it is Galatians. I love the theme of Freedom woven throughout. Freedom. I let the word hum in the back of my mind as I dive into work.

Check email, set up at least one social media post, try not to get sucked into Facebook or my Instagram feed. There’s a certain amount of social media upkeep that I need to do to stay in touch with readers. But it can also be really distracting.

9:15 AM: Time to write! I pull up my new top-secret project and dive in. It’s an epic fantasy novel with lots of characters, horse warriors, and massive battles. I LOVE it.

But my current scene has been so hard to get down on the page. There’s a lot going on – my character is on the sidelines of a battle, translating for his foreign master and struggling with watching so much killing and being helpless to stop it. I’m trying to balance the action with conveying key plot information and realistically portraying my character’s reactions … AND keep the pace of the story moving.

Rough.

11:00 AM: I take a break to chat with Jill Williamson about our upcoming Facebook party on Friday, June 22nd! We’re both celebrating the release of the final books in our trilogies (The Songkeeper Chronicles and The Kinsman Chronicles) so we decided to team up for an epic party with so many cool giveaways! (You guys should join us if you’re free!)

Eventually, our chat turns from the party to our current writing projects, and Y’all, this is so important for writers. Community with other writers! I’ve spent way too much of my writing career trying to go it alone and I’m so grateful now for friends who inspire and encourage me!

Of course, because we’re talking STORIES – something we both love – we keep chatting for a while.

12:40 PM: Check social media. Share a few Facebook Party/Song of Leira launch posts and then grab a bite to eat. I get completely distracted reading a book over lunch. We’ll call it market research. (That’s important, right?)

2:00 PM: Eventually – see, I totally lost track of the time – I manage to set the book aside and wade back into that scene. Man. It is so hard! But it’s coming. Slowly but surely.

3:30 PM – My head is spinning from trying to grasp this scene and I need a break, so it’s time for a snack and a short read. Losing myself in someone else’s world can be such a relief after I’ve been battling to make my own world make sense for several hours.

4:00 PM – Back to writing. I move seats this time. Sometimes changing my location can help break me out of a story-rut, so I set up my laptop in a different room. We are going to conquer this scene!

4:30 PM – It’s not working.

5:00 PM – Okay … new angle … I have an idea that just might fix my problem. I start brainstorming it out on paper in my story notebook. Now that I lay it out, I realize that it means rolling the story back a bit and making changes earlier on. But it’s worth it. I scroll back through two previous scenes and start laying the groundwork.

6:30 PM – Yes, yes, this can definitely work! Still need to keep pushing the changes forward through the story so I can catch up to where I got stuck.

But the cats are meowing which means … dinner time.

8:00 PM – My brain is dead so I take a long break for dinner before I arm myself with the Wonder Woman soundtrack and charge back into writing.

10:00 PM – I’m getting closer. I have almost finished laying the groundwork through the previous scenes and am already ready to tackle the portion I’ve been struggling to finish all day.

12:00 AM – I am starting to fade now. It’s been a long day and I know I should go to sleep, but I don’t want to stop. I want to conquer this scene!

12:30 AM – There’s no way I’m conquering this scene tonight. *sigh* It will be there in the morning.

1:00 AM – Sleep.

So there you have it, a day in my life as a writer! Like I said, each day looks different for me. This was a dedicated story writing day. Some days I can sit and write on my novel all day long. More often, I write in segments around other projects – blog posts, articles, publishing research – and get in only an hour here and there on my novel, with the evening being the time when my story can shine!

And some writing days, the words just pour out like a waterfall. Other days, I have to fight for every word that winds up on the page. This was one of those days. But the good news is that I conquered that monster of a scene the next day!

Victory!

Gillian Bronte Adams is a sword-wielding, horse-riding, wander-loving fantasy author, rarely found without a coffee in hand and rumored to pack books before clothes when she hits the road. Working in youth ministry left her with a passion for journeying alongside children and teens. (It also enhanced her love of coffee.) Now, she writes novels that follow outcast characters down broken roads, through epic battles, and onward to adventure. And at the end of a long day of typing, she can be found saddling her wild thing and riding off into the sunset, seeking adventures of her own (and more coffee).