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Word Count Goals—How I Built a Process That Actually Works · Reality Writes

0:05
Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Reality Writes.
0:09
Ellie Alexander: I am author Ellie Alexander.
0:11
Ellie Alexander: This is the podcast where we talk about all things writer-ish, bookish, whatever else is on our mind.
0:16
Ellie Alexander: And we try to take you behind the scenes of the writing life and what goes into the process of sending books out into the world.
0:24
Ellie Alexander: And I am here today with the tech guy.
0:27
Tech Guy: Hello, hello.
0:28
Tech Guy: Yeah.
0:28
Tech Guy: Today we're covering uh some more writer-ish topics, um, all about process, right?
0:35
Ellie Alexander: All about process.
0:36
Ellie Alexander: But I think for any darlings who uh are readers and don't necessarily think of themselves as writers or, you know, think like, oh, this podcast might not be for me.
0:46
Ellie Alexander: I believe that you will appreciate this because we're really gonna give you a look behind the scenes at my writing process over the years, how it's shifted, how it hasn't shifted, um, and break down what it looks like for every book that I write.
1:03
Tech Guy: Yeah, and that's actually one of the things that we get comments on on the podcast all the time is that even though this is a podcast about writing and a podcast about reading, uh the topics we cover tend to be of interest to both.
1:18
Tech Guy: Uh, because as you said many times, if you want to be a great writer, you have to be a reader.
1:25
Ellie Alexander: It's true.
1:26
Ellie Alexander: It's true.
1:27
Ellie Alexander: And I think from the reading aspect, having been a lifelong reader myself, I'm always fascinated about the behind the scenes of writing too, how the book that you're holding in your hands goes from the seed of an idea to actually being in print or audio or ebook.
1:44
Tech Guy: Yeah, I can say without a doubt that I was blown away when I learned the entire process and, you know, have experienced it both through you, through traditional publishing, and then also the indie route, that we've done a few books ourselves together.
2:01
Tech Guy: And it is a monster amount of work.
2:04
Tech Guy: And the number of people that touch the books still boggles my mind to this day.
2:09
Ellie Alexander: I actually love the process.
2:11
Ellie Alexander: The process of writing is my favorite part, and this is another thing that I've been talking about a lot lately in the age of AI.
2:18
Ellie Alexander: If you take away that part of the process, you lose all of that creative energy, which is such a gift.
2:25
Ellie Alexander: Because even though I do so much plotting and planning before I start writing every book, I never exactly know where it's going to take me, which is such a gift.
2:33
Ellie Alexander: Because if I'm surprised, then you darlings are hopefully definitely surprised when there's a twist or a character who I did not think was going to be the killer that decides somewhere, you know, like a third of the way through the book that actually, you know what?
2:47
Ellie Alexander: You should probably be keeping your eye on me, Ellie.
2:50
Tech Guy: Yeah, totally.
2:52
Tech Guy: Uh so today we're gonna talk about process, right?
2:55
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
2:56
Tech Guy: Yeah.
2:56
Tech Guy: See what I did there.
2:57
Tech Guy: We're talking about the writing process.
2:59
Tech Guy: I said process, right, add.
3:01
Ellie Alexander: Oh no.
3:04
Tech Guy: Yeah.
3:04
Tech Guy: We've uh we come up with the greatest puns here on Reality Writes.
3:08
Tech Guy: Well, and as you've said, uh one of the main things that you concentrate on when it comes to process is word count.
3:15
Tech Guy: So it all starts with that, right?
3:17
Ellie Alexander: Word count is queen in uh my book to extend the pun.
3:21
Ellie Alexander: And then I'm sorry, darlings, we'll we'll try to stop with that.
3:24
Ellie Alexander: So, yes, I was recently reflecting in terms of how my word count has changed and evolved over the years because I've been writing for nearly two decades now.
3:35
Ellie Alexander: And I also have changed and upped my word count goals over the years.
3:41
Ellie Alexander: So, for any darlings who might be new to word count, I'm a big believer in setting a word count goal for your writing versus just, you know, maybe saying, like, oh, I'll write for two hours today or I'll write for 30 minutes, because you can spend that time, and I know like I sound like a broken record to some of you who've been OG listeners to this podcast or other things that I've put out there, but you can spend two hours and end up with nothing on a page.
4:08
Ellie Alexander: But if you set yourself a word count goal, then at the end of whatever time you've set aside to achieve that goal, you should have that number of words, whether it's 10 or 10,000 on the page.
4:20
Ellie Alexander: And so when I was first writing my very first mystery series, this was year one.
4:26
Ellie Alexander: We'll call it year one.
4:27
Ellie Alexander: This was long before I had a book contract.
4:30
Ellie Alexander: This was long before I had an agent.
4:32
Ellie Alexander: I just had the start of an idea.
4:34
Ellie Alexander: And I was working a different job.
4:38
Ellie Alexander: And I also had our son at home who was in kindergarten at the time.
4:44
Ellie Alexander: And so I had a very limited amount of time to write.
4:48
Ellie Alexander: And so I knew I needed to set myself a goal so that five days a week while I was not working my other job or we had our kiddo at home, I would have that chunk of time for writing.
5:01
Ellie Alexander: So my goal for year one was 250 words.
5:04
Ellie Alexander: And when I first started writing, that seemed like a lot of words.
5:08
Ellie Alexander: Let me tell you.
5:09
Ellie Alexander: It was like, oh my gosh, I have to write 250 words five days a week.
5:14
Ellie Alexander: But if you break it down like that, you I'm always working toward a completed first draft.
5:20
Ellie Alexander: And in that completed first draft, we're just talking about about a draft.
5:24
Ellie Alexander: These words don't necessarily have to be pretty.
5:26
Ellie Alexander: The goal is to get the story onto the page.
5:29
Tech Guy: Yeah.
5:30
Tech Guy: And that's something that you talk about in your course, the Mystery Series Masterclass, too, is just the number of words, because you talk a lot about the number of words you write now per day.
5:40
Tech Guy: But that has changed over the years and obviously didn't start there, like you said.
5:44
Tech Guy: So I I think uh that's a really important point for especially for new writers out there to understand is that it's it's all about developing that muscle and and learning, like getting into the habit of writing.
6:00
Tech Guy: I'm gonna write 200 words today, I'm gonna write 400 words today, I'm gonna write, you know, and and repeating that and growing that over time as it gets easier and easier to uh to write that number of words rather than trying to sit down and say, I'm gonna write 2,500 words today and realizing 300 words in, that's a lot of words.
6:23
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
6:23
Ellie Alexander: And then you're setting yourself up for failure too.
6:26
Ellie Alexander: And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you're like, oh, okay, I can't do this.
6:30
Ellie Alexander: Whereas if you set something that's really manageable, it could be 50 words a day, it could be 100 words a day.
6:35
Ellie Alexander: It doesn't have to be a lot, but you start to chip away at that goal of trying to get to like 50 or 60,000 words as a first draft.
6:43
Ellie Alexander: Remember, darlings, especially any writers who are listening, we're talking about a first draft, which is just a draft.
6:51
Ellie Alexander: Um, okay, so then 250 words was my goal the first year of writing.
6:57
Ellie Alexander: And then years two to three, this is again before I have an agent, an editor, a book contract.
7:04
Ellie Alexander: I am still learning the process for myself, which as an aside, I know I've said this before too, but I think it's always worth repeating.
7:13
Ellie Alexander: You have to find your own process and what works for you.
7:16
Ellie Alexander: You can't have anyone else necessarily dictate exactly what is going to work for you, myself included.
7:23
Ellie Alexander: You know, you might say, like, okay, Ellie, I've tried word count, and for whatever reason, that doesn't work for me.
7:28
Ellie Alexander: That's fine.
7:28
Ellie Alexander: Like, figure out what works for you.
7:30
Ellie Alexander: Okay, so in years two to three, this is pre-book deal again, I was writing 500 words a day.
7:37
Ellie Alexander: And part of the reason I was writing 500 day, 500 days, part of the reason I was writing 500 words a day, again, taking the weekends off.
7:45
Ellie Alexander: So this is Monday through Friday, is that I had started developing a little bit of muscle memory.
7:51
Ellie Alexander: So it was getting slightly easier.
7:53
Ellie Alexander: The first year, when 250 words felt like a stretch, the second and third years, I was like, oh, wait, I can go a little bit more.
8:00
Ellie Alexander: Oh, this is coming easier.
8:01
Ellie Alexander: I'm starting to learn the flow and the rhythm of my time.
8:05
Ellie Alexander: I think I can push myself to 500 words.
8:07
Ellie Alexander: Um, and it worked.
8:09
Tech Guy: When do you know that it's time to make that swap, like, or to make that change?
8:15
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, that's a great question.
8:16
Ellie Alexander: I think that, like once it starts to feel like it's coming easy, like if you're hitting that 250 words or whatever goal you've set for yourself, and you're hitting that within, you know, a half hour or an hour of your writing time, or it's just you are feeling like, oh, this rhythm is is working for me.
8:34
Ellie Alexander: Now, maybe that becomes your long-term process too, which is fine.
8:38
Ellie Alexander: But for me, I knew I had a goal of wanting to write multiple series.
8:41
Ellie Alexander: And so I was, and I was just learning and trying so many things out at that point in time too, some of which was working and a lot of it wasn't either.
8:50
Ellie Alexander: And that's again part of the process.
8:52
Tech Guy: Once you make that change, then is it okay to go back if you let's say you're writing 250 words a day, you make the change and you say, okay, now I'm gonna start writing 500 words a day.
9:04
Tech Guy: But 500 words seems like too much.
9:07
Tech Guy: Is it okay to dial it down?
9:09
Ellie Alexander: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
9:11
Ellie Alexander: Again, like I think it's so important that you feel empowered to set your own goals and figure out what works for you and not feel the pressure of a word count goal, even if it's something that you're setting for yourself.
9:25
Ellie Alexander: I mean, I always like a good stretch goal because it does help motivate me.
9:29
Ellie Alexander: But if it's if it's something where you're like, oh my gosh, this is I've I've gone way too far, yes, backtrack and go back to the sweet spot that is working for you.
9:38
Tech Guy: Awesome.
9:38
Tech Guy: Okay, so now you're at 500 words.
9:42
Tech Guy: Is this phase you're at?
9:44
Ellie Alexander: 500 words for years two to three.
9:46
Ellie Alexander: Year four, this is all of writing uh my first mysteries too.
9:50
Ellie Alexander: I should categorize that because before I started writing mysteries, the very first book that I wrote was a memoir.
9:56
Ellie Alexander: So I had already spent five years before this point in time learning the craft of writing a memoir.
10:02
Ellie Alexander: So I was coming into writing a mystery with like some baseline.
10:06
Ellie Alexander: Okay, year four, I have signed my first two book contracts.
10:12
Ellie Alexander: And the way that it happened for me is really quickly, right out of the gate, my agent sold one series, and then a few months later, he sold a second series.
10:20
Ellie Alexander: So from the time I launched my professional mystery writing career, I was writing two different mystery series for two different publishing houses, which was so exciting, completely overwhelming.
10:35
Ellie Alexander: I was still figuring out what I was doing.
10:37
Ellie Alexander: Uh, so I immediately bumped my daily word count goal up to a thousand words a day because I was like, oh gosh, okay, we're in it now.
10:46
Ellie Alexander: Now we're now we're cooking with yes.
10:49
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
10:50
Tech Guy: And I remember that happening and remember you talking when we'd be out to dinner with friends or whatever, and and you would, you know, drop the fact that you're writing a thousand words a day.
11:02
Tech Guy: And and that got into like, you know, some surprised reactions of like, how could you possibly write a thousand words a day?
11:11
Tech Guy: You know, um, and and then it it became like this is this is really this is your job, right?
11:18
Tech Guy: This is what you're doing.
11:19
Tech Guy: And so you're sitting down and you're accomplishing this every day.
11:23
Tech Guy: Um, but that's year four.
11:25
Tech Guy: Where did it go from there?
11:26
Ellie Alexander: Year four, a thousand words a day.
11:28
Ellie Alexander: And then year five, I was like, you know what?
11:32
Ellie Alexander: I'm writing multiple series now.
11:34
Ellie Alexander: I'm publishing four to five books a year from the get-go, which is not always the case, right?
11:42
Ellie Alexander: You might spend the first couple of years of your career publishing one book because the way that the publishing houses work, especially with Cozy Mysteries, things were coming out like every six months, some every four to six months.
11:54
Ellie Alexander: Um, so I was like, all right, we have to go up to 2,000 words a day.
11:58
Ellie Alexander: So from year five to year 12, actually, it was 2,000 words a day, five days a week, writing multiple mystery series.
12:09
Ellie Alexander: And that really was my rhythm for a big chunk of time then from years five to twelve, two thousand words every day.
12:15
Tech Guy: Explain for the darlings too, though, the time factor, right?
12:18
Tech Guy: Because you weren't writing 2,000 words in the same time it took you to write 500 words or 250 words necessarily, right?
12:26
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, that's a great point.
12:27
Ellie Alexander: Yes.
12:28
Ellie Alexander: Again, because I now have developed some muscle memory.
12:32
Ellie Alexander: I'm starting to really sink into how I'm getting to those cliffhangers twists.
12:40
Ellie Alexander: I I that starts to just become secondary.
12:42
Ellie Alexander: It's like you or any other career path, right?
12:44
Ellie Alexander: Once you've worked at a job for a while, you become more proficient and then you work your way up to expert level.
12:52
Ellie Alexander: And and that carries across over every profession, I think.
12:56
Ellie Alexander: It's not just unique to writing.
12:57
Ellie Alexander: But I think because writing is a creative endeavor, it feels more whimsical or ethereal or mystical versus the goal here with this podcast and everything that I try to put out there is like, no, it's tangible.
13:10
Ellie Alexander: Like let it's a real job.
13:12
Tech Guy: Yeah, it's an output.
13:13
Tech Guy: Um, you know, when when you if for any job, uh no matter what you're doing, you go to work for a certain number of hours a day and you have an output that you create.
13:24
Tech Guy: And um, you know, whether that's number of customers served, do you want fries with that?
13:30
Tech Guy: Uh or or, you know, yeah, uh all the way up to, I don't know, building rockets.
13:35
Tech Guy: Um, you know, hopefully they're not building more than one rocket in a day, but you never know.
13:39
Tech Guy: You never know.
13:40
Tech Guy: You don't know what the process is like these days, I guess.
13:43
Tech Guy: All right.
13:43
Tech Guy: So that's through year 12.
13:45
Tech Guy: What happened next?
13:49
Ellie Alexander: Year 13, we took another uh turn because year 13 was the point at which I started writing in multiple genres.
13:58
Ellie Alexander: So I dipped a pinky toe into writing my first cozy rom-com and my first, I'm gonna call it cozy fantasy, which was Lost Coast Literary.
14:10
Ellie Alexander: And so at that point in time, writing multiple genres, as well as still writing multiple series, I bumped my daily word count up to 3,000 words.
14:21
Ellie Alexander: And I have been at 3,000 words a day from that point on until today.
14:27
Ellie Alexander: Still 3,000 words.
14:30
Tech Guy: It's amazing.
14:30
Tech Guy: I mean, that's yeah, you know, quick math, that's 15,000 words a week, 60,000 words a month.
14:36
Tech Guy: Incredible.
14:37
Tech Guy: From a non-writer's perspective, that just seems amazing.
14:42
Tech Guy: But again, going back to the whole thing of like it being an output, and you you said it, right?
14:49
Tech Guy: You it it took you time to get here to this level.
14:52
Tech Guy: You've you've built that muscle, you built that expertise, and now you're using it to up your output based on the number of series you're writing, the number of books you're writing, the number of publishers you're writing for, um, you know, those uh all of that kind of built upon itself to get to this level.
15:13
Ellie Alexander: Exactly, right?
15:14
Ellie Alexander: I didn't start out at 3,000 words a day.
15:16
Ellie Alexander: I started out at 250 words a day over 15 years ago.
15:20
Ellie Alexander: And so it's been a long, slow process and those like step-ups each time.
15:26
Ellie Alexander: And to circle back to your other point, I'm still using the same chunk of writing time each day to write 3,000 words.
15:34
Ellie Alexander: But again, I have this whole breadth of experience and history behind me that allows me to do that.
15:40
Ellie Alexander: And so now I really can write a a pretty terrible first draft.
15:45
Ellie Alexander: Or I would say actually my first drafts have gotten a lot better over time, too, especially if it's a book or a series that I'm really familiar with the world, like the Big Shot Mysteries.
15:54
Ellie Alexander: I don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about what Lance is gonna say when he comes onto the scene, things like that.
16:00
Tech Guy: Right.
16:00
Tech Guy: Yeah, you're pretty you're you're pretty familiar with those characters by this point, 20, 24 or five books in, yeah.
16:08
Ellie Alexander: Exactly.
16:09
Ellie Alexander: But I am I'm not spending, you know, 12 hours a day to get to 3,000 words.
16:15
Ellie Alexander: That is just it's it's in me.
16:17
Ellie Alexander: But the gift of that then is I'm writing a first draft in about a month.
16:22
Ellie Alexander: So I can I can produce a lot more writing each year just because of the muscle memory and the time that I've put in this far.
16:31
Ellie Alexander: And I absolutely love this piece of writing.
16:36
Ellie Alexander: This is by far my favorite part of the process is to just be deep in creating a new story.
16:43
Ellie Alexander: When we get farther along and we're talking about edits and copy edits and page proofs, which are the bane of my existence, it's not quite as fun.
16:53
Ellie Alexander: It's cool because you get to see the story like take shape and other people are touching it and it's getting better and all of those things.
16:59
Ellie Alexander: But to be in another world, like just letting myself run free and see where a story is going to lead me and still be surprised all the time.
17:09
Ellie Alexander: Like I talked about at the beginning.
17:11
Ellie Alexander: That's my sweet spot.
17:13
Ellie Alexander: If I could just live there forever, I'd be blissfully happy.
17:17
Tech Guy: Right.
17:18
Tech Guy: Since you brought up time, uh, that is something that that is interesting because word count is a priority.
17:25
Tech Guy: And so if you're focused on uh, you know, starting out the day and getting to that word count, what are the things that don't get done?
17:32
Tech Guy: What are what are the things that get deprioritized for word count?
17:36
Tech Guy: Because there's more to being an author than just writing.
17:39
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
17:40
Ellie Alexander: I I would say the thing is, word count is the one thing that I prioritize above all else.
17:48
Ellie Alexander: So I'm not responding to emails.
17:51
Ellie Alexander: Emails will sit in my inbox for days.
17:54
Ellie Alexander: Uh, if you're waiting for a response from me, darlings, it's just because like I'm deep in writing a new story and I will get to that when I have time.
18:02
Ellie Alexander: But word count is always my number one priority.
18:05
Ellie Alexander: It's again, it's my professional job.
18:07
Ellie Alexander: So I'm not like out for lunch and shopping and like doing other things in the world because I'm writing and it's my priority.
18:14
Ellie Alexander: But yeah, I would say word count, because it is my top priority, everything else that I have to do falls to the bottom of the list.
18:22
Ellie Alexander: So then when I'm done with word count at the end of the day, when I hit 3,000 words, and maybe let's say I hit that by like two or three o'clock in the afternoon, maybe I hit it by noon.
18:33
Ellie Alexander: It does take a lot of energy to be in that creative space.
18:37
Ellie Alexander: So then sometimes I have to like prioritize, okay, like, all right, for the next, you know, three or four hours left of my workday, what do I have to get done?
18:46
Ellie Alexander: Usually that's some sort of like copy edit or page proof or that piece of the puzzle that has to take secondary priority because those are goals and deadlines that are predetermined by the publishing houses.
18:59
Ellie Alexander: But yeah, social media, like all the other things, fall to the bottom of the list.
19:03
Ellie Alexander: And sometimes that that can be a problem too, because it's like, okay, I have to finish a book.
19:09
Ellie Alexander: Shoot, when am I going to bake a recipe for the next bake shop or or test something in the kitchen?
19:16
Tech Guy: Or I have three books coming out in the next two months.
19:19
Tech Guy: How do I put together marketing plans and execute them for all three books?
19:24
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
19:24
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, exactly.
19:25
Ellie Alexander: We were just having this conversation the other night.
19:28
Tech Guy: Exactly.
19:28
Tech Guy: Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything, but uh okay.
19:32
Tech Guy: So you just listed off a bunch of things though that that get pushed down on the priority list.
19:36
Tech Guy: Like break those down in terms of like what because you said for you right now, for a genre and uh series that you're familiar with, you can write a first draft in a month.
19:47
Tech Guy: So we know it takes about a month to write a first draft.
19:51
Tech Guy: How much time do those other steps take?
19:54
Tech Guy: Like the other steps in the process of you know, a book?
19:58
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
19:59
Ellie Alexander: Well, I would say for me, editing a book now usually takes a good solid two weeks for the first pass because I really have to do a deeper dive.
20:13
Ellie Alexander: I tend to write smaller first drafts, 50 to 60,000 words.
20:18
Ellie Alexander: So my first editing pass is layering in all kinds of detail.
20:23
Ellie Alexander: And I always think that part is gonna go faster because I think, oh, you know, I'm gonna do a read through, I'll make notes in the margin.
20:31
Ellie Alexander: I always keep a notebook next to me of things that I know I'm gonna change once I come back to a book.
20:36
Ellie Alexander: And inevitably, it always takes so much longer.
20:40
Ellie Alexander: I think, oh, I'm gonna edit, I'm gonna use that same word count time and I'm gonna edit 10 chapters today.
20:47
Ellie Alexander: But I usually can only get two to three chapters edited at a time.
20:52
Ellie Alexander: So usually that's two to three weeks of editing.
20:55
Ellie Alexander: And then depending on the publishing house, one of my publishers, we do a lot more collaboration.
21:01
Ellie Alexander: So I'll send my editor really a glorified second draft that's that's been worked through.
21:07
Ellie Alexander: And then she'll come in and do a developmental edit and send me a big letter.
21:12
Ellie Alexander: So that one I don't touch as much.
21:14
Ellie Alexander: With my other publishing house, I'm sending them a really pretty polished, usually third draft.
21:21
Ellie Alexander: So that gets another touch.
21:23
Ellie Alexander: And again, the editing and anything in that line gets top priority over than responding to email, doing dishes, laundry, grocery shopping, like anything else.
21:35
Tech Guy: For the lay darlings out there, um, I I've got your back, don't worry.
21:40
Tech Guy: Um speaking as a non writer, so you mentioned your first draft mean 50 to 60,000 ish words, and then you start the layering process.
21:50
Tech Guy: Tell everybody like a typical, like let's say 300 page book, what final copy, how many total words?
22:00
Ellie Alexander: Would that be around Around 70,000, somewhere between like high, high 60s to mid-70s.
22:09
Ellie Alexander: 80,000 is probably the top end of that.
22:12
Ellie Alexander: But yeah, I would say like 70 is a good goal as a finished book.
22:17
Tech Guy: But still, you're you're talking about the editing layering process having to add 10 to 20,000 words.
22:24
Tech Guy: Right.
22:24
Tech Guy: In addition to making up for all the words that you cut from the draft, right?
22:31
Tech Guy: So yeah.
22:32
Tech Guy: So that it is a significant amount of work.
22:34
Tech Guy: Okay.
22:35
Tech Guy: All right.
22:35
Tech Guy: Yeah.
22:36
Tech Guy: So what's what comes next and how long does it take?
22:39
Ellie Alexander: Then you have all of the, let's say the book then has gone through all these editing stages.
22:45
Ellie Alexander: I've worked with my publishing team.
22:47
Ellie Alexander: Then you have the marketing of the book, um, the early marketing, the getting readers just to know that you have another book coming out, responding to reviews, like all of that piece.
23:01
Ellie Alexander: And then there's also like going out on tour or doing things once the book releases to get readers excited about a new book, which is not a small task.
23:14
Tech Guy: No, it is not.
23:14
Tech Guy: It it is um sometimes very, very difficult.
23:18
Tech Guy: It is fun, and it is another part of the creative process in terms of having, you know, coming up with new ways because it's it it gets, you know, you can't just say, here's a picture of my book, here's a picture of my book, here's a picture of my book.
23:31
Tech Guy: You know, it's always coming up with creative ways to introduce new books to people.
23:36
Tech Guy: And then dealing with the frustration of, you know, a lot of work going into the marketing campaign for a book and having, you know, social media following and everything, and seeing just a small fraction of your following actually see the the marketing uh campaign that you put together.
23:54
Ellie Alexander: Yes, I know, which is I'm so lucky because we we're a team in that, and a lot of writer friends are doing that solo.
24:00
Ellie Alexander: Uh, and you you can't discount the hours that we personally spend promoting and marketing all of the books in the series, is at least equal to the uh amount of time I spend writing.
24:15
Tech Guy: I do want to back up to cover one topic that I think is you you talk a lot about again in your course and with your coaching students and everything, and that's research.
24:27
Tech Guy: Um you I know you put a ton of research into every book you write, but especially when you're starting a new series or spin-off, you know, like with the novel detectives and everything.
24:39
Tech Guy: I know because we do a lot of traveling for this research.
24:44
Ellie Alexander: So because you're part of it, whether you want to be or not.
24:47
Tech Guy: Yeah, you know, there's there's there is uh a lot of work that goes into that.
24:52
Tech Guy: So talk a little bit about that and its importance and then just the time it takes.
24:56
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, that's another huge chunk of time.
24:58
Ellie Alexander: You it depends on sort of where I am.
25:01
Ellie Alexander: Sometimes that research happens ahead of writing the first draft.
25:05
Ellie Alexander: Sometimes it happens in between writing the first draft and then starting on edits, because as I've talked about extensively on this podcast and in other places as well, you need time away from that first draft to be able to come back to it with fresh eyes.
25:21
Ellie Alexander: One of the great things for me was because right out of the gate, I was writing multiple series, I kind of had to force myself to switch gears and I'd be writing Bake Shop and then I'd go and I'd write a Meg.
25:33
Ellie Alexander: And so I'd have time away from the Bake Shop and then I could come to come back to it with fresh eyes.
25:38
Ellie Alexander: So I often encourage new writers to use that time after they've finished a first draft.
25:45
Ellie Alexander: Now is a great time to do a deeper dive into research.
25:49
Ellie Alexander: If you're, you know, setting your book in, I don't know, the Southern Florida coastline or something, like go to the coast then, like see how it smells, all those things.
25:57
Ellie Alexander: For me, I don't have to do as much research for an established series.
26:04
Ellie Alexander: But when I'm working on a new series, when I'm tiptoeing into a different genre, there's a lot more time and effort that needs to go into world building, character development, making sure I'm getting the sensory details right, plotting all of those things.
26:20
Ellie Alexander: So that is probably a good week or two of time just in and of itself and being really immersed into creating those worlds.
26:30
Ellie Alexander: And that can look very different depending on what the series is.
26:34
Ellie Alexander: Maybe for you and I, it's like a trip for a long weekend to Half Moon Bay, and we're having a great time and we're enjoying it.
26:40
Ellie Alexander: But I'm also stopping every five minutes to take pictures of everything and notes and like little videos of how things smell.
26:46
Ellie Alexander: And um, so yeah, it's a getaway, but it's also always work then too.
26:51
Ellie Alexander: Good work, but work.
26:52
Tech Guy: It is work.
26:53
Tech Guy: It it definitely is.
26:54
Tech Guy: And it's always top of mind, too, whenever we are on a research trip.
26:58
Tech Guy: Even when we are having fun, I think you and I are always kind of laser focused on this is what you're talking about in the book, or this would be great to include in the next book, or yeah, oh my gosh, look at this place.
27:14
Tech Guy: You know, this has got to be part of a setting later or whatever it is.
27:17
Tech Guy: I will say though, that I don't think you give yourself enough credit because you did talk about the amount of work that goes into research for things that are new to you, and you don't have to do as much for things that are familiar, like the bake shop mysteries.
27:32
Tech Guy: But the one thing I will say is I see the amount of work that goes into like the bake shop mysteries.
27:38
Tech Guy: And even if that writing those characters is new to you, the one thing I will say is the incorporation of food and and the baking process and everything is uh so detailed.
27:50
Tech Guy: And even if it's just a recipe that that you're including that Jules and the team at tort might be baking in a particular book, you kind of do a deep dive on that if it's not something that you're very familiar with and you do become familiar with it.
28:03
Tech Guy: So there is, I think, research, even for the the familiar stuff as well.
28:08
Ellie Alexander: No, that's true.
28:08
Ellie Alexander: And I do also try to keep up on food trends and baking trends, and I'm always on the hunt for new tips that I can weave in that Jules might be passing on to like one of the young bakers in the bay shop for sure.
28:21
Ellie Alexander: There's always some level of research, but there's just definitely a lot more time that you have to spend if you're building out a brand new world.
28:29
Ellie Alexander: Um, so I now have to take that into account with my writing schedule because yes, I'm writing 3,000 words a day and I can write a first draft in a month or so.
28:41
Ellie Alexander: But then I have to think like, oh, okay, and this just happened this year where I thought I was gonna write two new cozy rom-coms.
28:48
Ellie Alexander: And I realized, no, I need a lot more time for this because I am building a new world.
28:55
Ellie Alexander: It's a new setting, it's a new set of characters, it's a different genre.
28:59
Ellie Alexander: I've written a couple, but I don't have the same cellular memory that I do for murder at this point in time.
29:06
Ellie Alexander: Um, so I had to reach out to my editor and say, hey, we got to change the schedule around.
29:10
Ellie Alexander: I can do one this year.
29:11
Ellie Alexander: Let's push the other back to next year because of just that.
29:15
Ellie Alexander: The time that I require is gonna take a lot more than it might be if I was writing something that I was really familiar with.
29:22
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I would say the last thing that I would add to my list that I do all year round, and that technically is work.
29:50
Ellie Alexander: It doesn't feel like work, and it's also one of the best parts of work, is reading.
29:54
Ellie Alexander: I am constantly reading.
29:56
Ellie Alexander: I think you should be reading in the genre you want to write in extensively because you're learning the craft, you're learning what's working in the genre, you're picking up on the market.
30:08
Ellie Alexander: Those are also going to be future authors that you can network with.
30:12
Ellie Alexander: You're building your writer IQ this way.
30:14
Ellie Alexander: You should also be reading in genres that you might want to write in in the future.
30:18
Ellie Alexander: So for me, I'm constantly reading mysteries, but I'm reading a lot of other things too.
30:22
Ellie Alexander: And then I'm just reading for fun and for pleasure.
30:25
Ellie Alexander: But even when I'm reading for fun or for pleasure, there's work going on in my subconscious in the back of my brain.
30:31
Ellie Alexander: Uh, and I I think I think that is a mandatory piece of being a writer.
30:37
Ellie Alexander: You have to read and read a lot.
30:39
Tech Guy: It's funny when you said it's work, but it doesn't really feel like work.
30:43
Tech Guy: Uh, that's totally true.
30:45
Tech Guy: I think a lot of people out there, writers and readers, can can relate that if you're gonna have to work, reading great books is, you know, it doesn't seem like that bad of a thing.
30:54
Tech Guy: I kind of laughed when you said that because it immediately reminded me of Sky Guy and his running, you know, or so for the darlings out there who don't know, our son was a cross-country runner from elementary school all the way through college.
31:07
Tech Guy: And he had a shirt at a couple of different schools, he had a shirt that said, My sport is your sport's punishment.
31:15
Tech Guy: And that just that just made me think of that.
31:18
Tech Guy: That, you know, as a as a writer, your your work you is is going to be reading.
31:25
Tech Guy: And that that is such cool work.
31:28
Ellie Alexander: Exactly.
31:29
Ellie Alexander: We need a t-shirt.
31:30
Ellie Alexander: My work is your pleasure or something like that.
31:34
Tech Guy: Yeah, exactly.
31:35
Tech Guy: Just something.
31:35
Tech Guy: It's it there's something there.
31:37
Tech Guy: We'll have to think about that.
31:38
Tech Guy: But it probably probably needs to use a bad pun too.
31:42
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, it does.
31:43
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, for sure.
31:44
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
31:45
Tech Guy: All right.
31:46
Tech Guy: Lots of learnings there.
31:48
Tech Guy: Um, very cool stuff.
31:49
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I hope you enjoyed it, darlings.
31:51
Ellie Alexander: And as always, hit us up if you have any other questions in the comments.
31:55
Ellie Alexander: I believe you can even leave us a voicemail.
31:59
Tech Guy: Yeah, send us a message.
32:00
Tech Guy: The link's right there in the show notes.
32:02
Tech Guy: We'd love to hear from you.
32:03
Tech Guy: And with that, I will say until next time.
32:07
Ellie Alexander: Till next time.