Today I’m going to talk about a little-known secret. Are you ready for it? Here it is:

Writing is work!

You may be chuckling right now, the same way you do when you hear models claim that stretching sexily on rocks on exotic beaches with their freakishly perfect bodies is hard work because they had to get up at 5 am. (Sorry, models.) But I’m being quite serious. Read on and see what I mean.

Contrary to popular belief, writers don’t have all the free time in the world. So, I’m sorry, I can’t help you move/baby-sit your kid/etc. because I have to write. I know I don’t drive to an office every day but just because I’m at home when I write does not mean I’m actually laying around in my pajamas eating bonbons. (Well, most the time. Sometimes I actually do do that.) Believe it or not, books don’t write themselves. And here’s another secret: romance novels are real books. They take time. Hours and hours, months and months. Romance novels are not easier to write than any other genre of book. Don’t believe me? Well, obviously you have not seen the pile of revisions sitting on my desk. My point? While authors have flexible schedules, that doesn’t necessarily mean we have any more free time than someone with a “real” job. And many of us have “real” jobs as well, or we have kids to raise and try to write in our “spare” time. And a lot of people I know balance jobs, kids and writing. (I bow to them, truly.) So when we choose to stay home on the weekends to work on a project instead of going to a barbecue it means we’re working very hard on our second career. Because writing is a job!

Also. It’s not cheap to be a writer. Believe it or not, we have overhead and lots of it. When I bought my new Mac Air I had a lot of comments such as, “Must be nice! Hardy har har.” Well, you know what? It is nice! It’s also the tool to my livelihood. Soon after I sold my first books to New York I decided it was time for a new laptop. (My other laptop died a slow death due to a fatal invasion of toast crumbs.) It was strange to walk into the Apple store and know I was buying something that was going to be the conduit between my head and a book that would be mass marketed in bookstores. I started looking at computers in a whole new light. And that’s not the only expense. I put a lot of money into writing organization membership dues, promoting myself, going to conference, my website, reader conventions, contests and giveaways…the list goes on. Writing is really like starting a business. You start out with nothing, then you put every penny back into your career until you—hopefully—start seeing a profit. So yes. Writing definitely has overhead. Much more than people think.

Here’s another secret. An author probably spends half of her productive computer time actually writing. Notice I said productive computer time—if procrastination was an Olympic event I would have a gold medal. Several of them, actually. Anyway, in this day and age an author needs to have an internet presence. What does that mean? It means being on myspace, romance review websites, facebook, reader chats, forums, blogging, even youtube. In fact it’s hard to know where to draw the line on internet promo because you could easily spend the majority of your time doing these things. I actually know authors who get so caught up in internet promo their writing suffers.

My final point. Conferences and conventions are not vacations. Of course it’s fun to see other authors, many of whom we know well due to the wonders of the internet. In fact, I love going to conference. But it’s still work, not to mention expensive. You never know who you’re going to meet, so you have to be “on” all the time. It’s the one time of year an author gets to talk face-to-face with the top names in the industry. Sure, sometimes we manage to get out of the hotel and sing karaoke with drag queens, but all in all, conferences are work. I always come back feeling exhausted and useless. Not at all the same as when I come home from Mexico.

So thank you for listening to my lesson on why writing is actually a job. Fortunately all my own friends and family totally get this so I’m lucky. Still, once in awhile I meet someone and must enlighten them to the realities of pursuing a career in writing. Now, I suppose I should put an end to this particular type of internet promo and get to work on my revisions. ☺ Meanwhile, discuss amongst yourselves.