A while back on Twitter reader asked:
“Ben, how much time do you spend writing fiction? Or is it quite sporadic? When did you start? Seems like challenging work on top of everything else you do”
Fiction is like eating dessert for me.
i.e., can’t have my pudding unless I eat my meat first.
So I schedule time for it usually months in advance.
Example:
When I wrote my last novel (Enoch Wars: Serpent Seed) I spent about 5 months getting ahead on emails, offers, sales pages, and other projects to carve out 6 weeks or so to write the first draft. Then I did other work for the next 4 or 5 months to get ahead after that so could carve out two months to edit that novel.
Another example:
When I had the urge to turn my first novel (Enoch Wars: Zombie Cop) into a screenplay I spent probably 7 or 8 months doing a ho’ bunch of other work, offers, emails, sales pages, ticky tack projects, etc before having a good month and a half to do that. Then, I took a couple weeks “off” from it to write the 64-page January 2024 Email Players issue (150th milestone — wanted to go big with it) just to come back and finish it up after that.
Yet another example:
When I decided to totally rewrite that first novel based on that screenplay (which was not intended, huge pain in the ass, and not just for me..) I spent a month getting ahead on Email Players and other stuff, before banging out the new novel and other work that entailed the last week of December, and the following January this year.
Anyway, fiction, non-fiction, whatever it is… I live and die by a schedule.
And that means an ever-growing & ever-changing daily list of tasks.
I am not sure how people do business any other way.
Nor, really, do I care.
But when it comes to putting out a lot of content that is what works for me.
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Ben Settle