Writing over lunch is the only way I can write my novels. I use Microsoft Word on a Surface Pro. They key to getting this done is to make sure I have a good outline, the plot is clear in my mind, and I don’t waste time.
If you missed it.
This is the third segment of the process of writing a novel. The first one covered Plotting a story with Plottr. The second covered Setting up Scrivener. With those two out of the way, let’s head deeper into Writing over lunch and using word.
Preparing for writing over lunch
Writing over lunch requires that I get in the car, drive to pick up food, find a good place to park and move to the passenger seat. I cannot type with the computer against the steering wheel. It’s just impossible for me.
It’s usually a dead-end street into a vacant lot or an open field. I’m one of those that needs quiet to concentrate, so the music goes off, I finish shoving down my food, and I start to type.
Yeah, you guessed it: Eating distracts me so I have to have it done.
How Long is Lunch:
I have 60 minutes, or as I like to think of it, three-thousand six-hundred seconds. It helps me feel less pressure, so just go with it.
Thanks!
That means I have to get from my office, do everything and get back in my office. It is a serious time constraint and I think it helps me focus.
How much do I write over lunch?
I break all my writing into scenes. The last novel, At Our Own Pace, started with 60 scenes. Don’t worry, it was less than that when I was done.
I’m usually in my parking spot in 15 minutes, and ready to type in twenty. This gives me thirty solid minutes to type, and a good five minutes to finish a thought. I’m blessed with the ability to focus and type as fast as I think. Errors are left, typos are left, incomplete paragraphs are left. I get to them later – if I have time – or I’ll catch them on my first quick edit.
On a good day, I can get between 1,000 and 1,500 words in that 30-minute burst. Heaps of typos though.
How long did it take to write the novel – first pass?
Writing over lunch for the first scene was on 9/28/2021 and I did it at least four days a week. Scene 57, the last one, was done on 12/15/2021.
Please understand that there were several weekends and some nights when I could write longer periods. We took a vacation (holiday for those in Europe) and I wrote for at least four or five hours a day, right after sunrise till lunch.
In Closing…
Writing over lunch is the only way I can find to get my stories on paper. There is too much going on in my life to block out the world, so lunch is perfect.
How do you find time to write?
Are you a plotter or do you write by the seat of your pants (Pantster)?
