For all of you who keep saying, “I’m gonna write a book one day,” or “What’s the big deal? If I had more time I could write a book.”

Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s more to writing a book than writing the book.

For most authors, there’s a whole lot going on when they aren’t writing all the words. Those other things going on that are not nearly as glamorous as the image you have in your head of someone pounding out words on a computer take a lot of time, too.

Want to know the reality of being an author? Then keep reading.

Planning takes so much time

There are authors that consider themselves pantsers. That means they sit down and let the words flow without to much thought about where it is all going. They have faith that it will all get where they need to go at some point.

For authors that make a living (or want to make a living) from writing fiction, there’s a lot of thought that goes into writing a book before the words ever hit the page.

Outlining, characterization (sometimes including character histories), and world building can take a lot of time. Not every author goes into great detail and there may be more thought put into one than the other. But most authors spend at least some time planning out this kind of stuff before they write the book.

The bugger of it is, sometimes things change along the way.

I know I need an outline. Without it, I get stuck and the book just dies a slow death. I’ve tried going without the outline. It’s painful. But, at some point in the book, the characters really take on a life of their own and that changes the book.

One character might reveal that she was a child bride or that he lived in a forest by himself for a year when he was ten years old and only survived because of the lone wolf that befriended him. Or a character might suddenly decide that the town he’s been living in sucks, jump in his car, and leave. Or someone could die.

You laugh, but it happens and then you’re typing words that came out of nowhere and wondering how this fits into your outline.

Sometimes it just doesn’t. And that’s when you have to decide whether to kill your babies (those precious words) or revise your outline so the plot makes sense.

Don’t forget to research

Fiction authors do a ridiculous amount of research before a book even begins. It’s kind of fun and kind of torture.

Some of the research we might do includes:

• reading books in our genre to be familiar with reader expectations
• looking at book covers to make sure readers will understand what kind of book we wrote
• typing keyword phrases into Amazon to see what kind of books it brings up and how many results there are
• reading blurbs and reading books about blurbs
• and more!

Learning from other authors

We all fangirl over someone. For authors, it’s other authors. We stalk their social media profiles. We watch what they post, what kind of graphics they use, and ask ourselves, “Why did she post that?”

We talk to writers in Facebook groups, on Reddit, on Twitter, and anywhere else authors who write the same genre as us are gathering. In places like these we can ask questions and get answers. And as time goes on and we become the writers others admire, we answer questions and share info to give back to the community.

We promote our work

I know some of y’all think that authors all have publishers who do the promoting for them but this is rarely true. Even if you have a publisher, you’re still expected to do a large amount of promotion yourself. You manage your own social media accounts and newsletters, and you may even have advertising — and this is regardless of whether you are an indie author or if you are with a publisher.

Promoting yourself and your work is a never-ending job.

So, the next time you see your wife, husband, friend, or other author-like person in your life scrolling through Facebook or jotting on a piece of paper, or watching TikTok even…

THEY REALLY ARE WORKING!