We talked to Kiwi author Laura Wolf about her writing journey. Here, she offers some insights into her writing habits and offers advice for aspiring authors.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: Hi Laura, can we ask why you started writing?
LW: I had always wanted to write a book (I think author was my career aspiration since I was tiny. When my kids were toddlers, all thoughts of working a regular job went out of the window (we lived rurally, so jobs that worked with children were hard to come by) and when my husband started his own business and was working in the evening I just decided F(*& IT! I'm tired anyway, I might as well get something out of my tiredness!
So I followed the 20Booksto50K Facebook groups posts on how to start, and wrote my first novel in about 150 hours jammed into a month. Basically, I stopped waiting for permission.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: So, what does your normal writing schedule look like?
LW: CLAW BACK ANY TIME I CAN. It was evenings mostly at first - sometimes awkwardly on the floor with my laptop in the hallway as I intermittently yelled at my kids to go to sleep. These days we have moved, one is in school and the other in Kindy, so those hours are gold. Also, my kitchen is full of dirty dishes, my hamper is full of laundry, and my floor covered in toys. Since I write in snatched hours here and there, these the draining things taht get bumped to the botom of my list.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: Describe your best writing moment...
LW: When I get carried away in a new plot. My favourite stages are at the beginning. Near the beginning, in the middle, close to the end - basically any time except for when it's time to proof, edit and format haha.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: How about your worst writing moment...
LW: Realising I had uploaded a final draft instead of an edited copy to Kindle. THREE MONTHS after the fact. It had one major error in it - two chapters repeating. I've still got a review on there pointing it out, although it's changed now. In the end, you have to laugh it off and learn for the next one though.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: What's your writing motivation?
LW: Seeing day dreams turn into solid works. Getting reviews and seeing sales come in is great motivation as well, as I can see other people enjoying my work. When 'A Cinderella for the Undercover Billionaire' was on Kindle Unlimited when I first uploaded it, I could see the page reads flying in and it was pretty amazing to see people pick it up and binge on it and finish the whole thing in three hours. There are also the people who get ten pages and bail on it, but seeing people go through it really quickly makes me recognise I've made something that my target market LOVE and that's some great air in my tires. If It wasn't for the fact that people are actually reading my work, I'd probably be doing something else.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: So, how many times have you participated in NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo?
LW: This will be my first year officially participating in NaNoWriMo athough my first book was aggressively put together in about a month, so it was inspiration for me to know it could be done when I started out.
I use Scrivener, which has a handy project target and session target and I aim to write an average of about 1000 new words per hour.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: Hour or word counts?
LW: I go by word counts. My full length novels are usually between 50k to 60k, short bonus books about 10-15k and novellas around 25k. I've also done some short stories that are shorter than that (mostly for competitions).
CANTERBURYWRITERS: At what time are you most productive? Morning or night? And how did you discover that?
LW: The most important thing is that I have no children near me. Generally I'm better in the mornings, which I've just found by working a lot whenever I can and the best sessions have been morning ones. Often my mornings get taken up with preparing kids for school and doing the Kindy drop off routes, etc. So, I lose a lot to the daily grind. It's kind of not even quality parent time either, because it's spent yelling things like "GET YOUR SHOES ON. EAT! EAT! EAT! WHERE IS YOUR JUMPER?"
So, it's pretty much wasted time. I WOULD try to get up earlier but the wee sprogs are often up about 5.30am as it is. Ah well, stages of my life. My advice, is to just take what you can get.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: How do you know when you're finished with a manuscript?
LW: I will WRITE HARD CORE and get my first draft out asap. As I write I usually self-edit the chapter or two or three before what I've written to get the flow going before jumping into the next scene. By the time I get to the end I'll read it through twice making my final edits, then publish it up into the harsh unforgiving world (although really all my readers are pretty nice). My motto is to get it out and then move on to the next one.
I AM improving with each book and I'll generally choose something to focus on each book, but I'm also pretty happy with the quality of the final product as well. Occasionally an error . will slip through - but I've also found a gazillion errors in traditionally published works (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows did the same chapter repeat thing I did, actually remember having to stand in line for the book, then stand in line to get the emergency replacement copies that were sent out three days later haha. I've also been reading through Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey recently which is RIDDLED with errors - so it's not an indie publisher issue.
You can probably see my work get better though. If you read A Cinderella for the Undercover Billionaire (my debut novel) I was really focussing on getting my plot structure right. With a Bridesmaid for the Playboy Billionaire I focused a lot on dialogue and on using a sense of place as a metaphor (how their office space or apartments change depending on their character development) and in my more recent An Activist for the Big Oil Billionaire I've been focusing on scenery and ambience, since it's more of a destination romance
Laura challenges herself with focusing on specific areas of craft with each book
CANTERBURYWRITERS: So what would your tips be for aspiring authors?
LW: Just do it. Don't let the blank page intimidate you and forget perfectionism. You should hardly expect to write Pride and Prejudice as your first work - and your first draft should be excessively ugly, but once there's words on the page you have something you can edit and you'll improve as you go. If the novel is too scary, enter every short story competition you can as it will start lubricating the wheels. Or even start on fanfiction, where the bar is very low, you can get immediate feed back and the characters are premade.
Also, get your cover made up while you write. It's blimmin' hard finding cover models to match your wacky descriptions after the fact.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: How did you figure out what genre you wanted to write?
LW: I went for contemporary romance for a few reasons.
- The world already exists. I LOVE dragons, and will one day for sure make up my own whole fantasy world, but when I'm writing in scraps of time I don't have time to work out a Game of Thrones size universe. I can just go 'Indiana. That exists, I've been there' and work with that as my base point.
- It's an easy place to exist. In the world of fluffy happy ever afters, it's easy to have writing as your happy place. I'm sure crime would be a fun project too, but for the moment, I'd rather spend my spare time in Happy Land.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: And finally a couple of random question - Coffee Tea or Wine?
LW: Coffee during the day, and then definitely wine. I find difficult scenes sometimes just need a glass of wine and then they'll work themselves out haha.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: How about ice-cream or cake?
LW: Neither! I'm a big lolly person but try to cut back on the sugar and eat boring old nuts instead.
CANTERBURYWRITERS: Thanks so much Laura, there are some true pearls of wisdom for our local writing community. We're looking forward to all your future releases.
