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Nephilim Quest 4 / The Book of the Dead / FINISHED, Editing


Creature Wars 2 / now planning the plot


Space Witches 3 / 75.000 words FIRST DRAFT DONE, NOW EDITING


7 Shabtis 2 / Pillar of Death 60.000 words (now at 8700 words)


Bastet Mysteries 50.000 words (now at 26.000 words)

finding time to write:
chart your writing time

How can you chart your writing time when you don't have any? What I mean with this: to find out possible time slots you could use for writing, you should pay attention to how you are using your time now. 

Writers publish books because they find time to write. You may have the illusion that other writers have long interrupted hours to write in. Trust me: most don't. 


You need to commit to your career as a writer - even if you aren't a published writer yet. That means you need to step out of your comfort zone and stop doing some things that steal your time and then replace the activities of those time slots with actual writing work.  It is so easy to say you are tired, the time slot isn't long enough for any serious writing. Trust me - even 15 minutes is enough if you decide you'll use it for writing.


So take a calendar or a notebook or a piece of paper that's big enough to write down what you do during your day. Every obligation you have. All the meetings. Dentist appointments.  Commuting. Dinner-times. Phone calls. Social media. Chats. Messaging. What you do when you have a little time to yourself (watching TV, lying on the couch knackered out, doing gardening...)
Chart your writing timeUse your calendar for a week to chart your writing time

Have a good look at your list and see if there are time slots you could have used for writing. And I don't mean only actual typing: walking your dog could be a perfect time to plot your story. Or maybe dictate it (if you find a decent dictation program that you can train to your way of speaking). Use a highlighter to mark those times you could have used for writing. Do these time slots repeat? Could you use those times to write a few words? To plan your story? 

Make it into a habit to plan your week beforehand. Look at those time slots you found you could use for writing and write them in your calendar as writing time. When you write them down, you are telling your subconscious that next week you won't let those precious time slots slip by. And keep your calendar open somewhere you can see it. Mark down the times you used for writing with a different color perhaps. That way, when you leaf through your calendar later on, you see what you have accomplished. It motivates you to keep finding those minutes you could use for writing. 


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Click on the Leenasbooks Newsletter headline above  to go to the newsletter blog's first page on Substack to see what it is about.

You can read the past posts there, and check if you are interested in listening to the audio chapters of my published books, or follow my stories as I write them.

Upon subscribing you will get the Prequel to Nephilim Quest: Angel.

Over two hundred years before Nephilim Quest 1 / Shadowhunter the roots of the story are planted.

A little girl missing her mother, in the palace of the mightiest of the dark Nephilim, hoping for an escape ...  

This book is not for sale anywhere - only readers who have subscribed to my mailing list will get it.



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