What's your routine regarding writing? Anyplace special you go to write?

I write everything in my home office. Nice computer set up, everything on Microsoft Word. What may be unique is that I write everything in the morning. Early morning. Typically between 4:00am and 7:00am. Those are my peak times where I’m the most creative and can get totally absorbed in the story.

That’s writing.

Now editing is a different story. To edit, I’ll wait a few days to let what I wrote settle. Then I’ll print it out maybe 10 pages at a time and I’ll read it out loud. I’ll use accents in the right places for the various characters. This helps get the dialogue more natural and really helps to polish the writing.

A lot of times it looks fine on the printed page, particularly to the author. But when you hear it, you can tell it’s off. Anyone else reading it would detect an unnatural flow. It would bug them. You miss it as the writer. But you pick it up when you hear it.

Writing’s the easy part in a way. It’s the hour upon hour upon hour of editing that takes more time – but is so necessary to have a nice finished work.