A Day in the Life of an Author: A Guest Post by Gill Paul
I’m on maternity leave! During this time, a few of my favorite authors offered to step up and write guest posts so that this blog would remain active while I adjust to my new role as a mother. I may also be a bit slower to respond. Thanks for understanding and for being so supportive of me, my family, and my blog. Want to donate a few dollars to keep this blog running or perhaps contribute to my diaper fund? You can do so on Venmo or Paypal.
A Day in the Life of an Author: A Guest Post by Gill Paul
9am: First I browse emails, check social media, and flick through the New York Times online. My partner and I have some silly domestic rituals, and one of them is that he hides my vitamin pill somewhere ingenious that he knows I will eventually stumble across during the course of the morning.
9.30 to 10am: Every day I phone a friend who has severe health problems. I’m her ‘confidante’ so we might discuss treatment decisions she has to make, but generally we gossip about anything and everything. She’s much younger than me – mid-thirties – but incredibly wise, perhaps because she has so much time to think.
10am to 12.30: Before I start writing I like to clear the desk of other jobs, such as writing articles and guest posts, filming the occasional Tiktok video, and fulfilling commitments to the charities I work for. Then it’s down to writing. There are different stages: research, planning, first draft, reading the first draft and freaking out that I’ll never be able to make it work – and who am I kidding that I ever thought I could be a writer anyway? – then calming down and working on second draft, smoothing and tightening as I go through several more drafts before it pings off to beta readers, then my agent and editors in the US and UK.
I deliver at the end of June each year then spend the summer months promoting the previous novel, which usually comes out late August/early September (this year it was The Manhattan Girls), all the while brainstorming with my editors what I’m going to write next. If the edits arrive back in the midst of this, it's a perfect storm of juggling three subjects at once and trying not to mix up my character names.
A Day in the Life of an Author: A Guest Post by Gill Paul
12.30 to 2: I’ll grab a bite to eat then go for a swim in a wild pond about twenty minutes’ walk from my home. It’s got a resident heron, a family of kingfishers, ducks and coots, and it’s surrounded by trees and wildflowers. I love the connection to nature, but I also love the other women there – all ages, all cultures, all of them a bit bonkers, especially us winter swimmers who melt the ice in January.
2 to 6: Back to the desk and this should be concentrated writing time as I am inspired by my swim. When it’s going well and the ideas are flowing, there’s no better feeling in the world (not even sex, wine and chocolate all at once). I don’t set myself word counts, just write till I run out of steam.
From 6pm on, I might read before dinner, or catch up on phone calls, or I might have a US book group to visit. I love Zooming in to book groups and have often stayed up till 2am our time for West Coast events. I do also have a social life, thank goodness – and my favorite evenings tend to involve meeting other authors to sup a cocktail or two. I fall asleep to one of the 32 settings on my sleep noise machine: crickets in a rainforest is the current choice, but they can give you very bizarre dreams. Last night I dreamt I was on a world tour with our late Queen and kept forgetting to curtsey…
Gill Paul’s novel The Manhattan Girls is about Dorothy Parker and three friends of hers who started a bridge group in 1920s New York City.
A Day in the Life of an Author: A Guest Post by Gill Paul
A Day in the Life of an Author: A Guest Post by Gill Paul
