As An Author, What Works For You?

I had a book reading for my second thriller, Lucky For Some, 13″ which you can order from Flipkart, amongst other portals recently. During this interaction, which took place at Bangalore’s Easy Library, we had a very interesting conversation about authors, their styles of writing, how they approach a plot and many other related aspects. These points set me thinking. I would like to share some of the points that stayed in my mind at the end of the session.

• Plot: I have shown a tendency to quickly figure out how I would like the book to end and build the story around this key aspect. There have been times when I have had to make changes to the story as it reached the end. In my debut novel, “It Can’t Be You,” the end itself was changed considerably though the result remained the same. Some authors have told me that they let the story find its own end. This is partially true in my case too, but overall I would say I determine fairly early in the game how the story should end, and work towards achieving that goal.
• Writing Regimen: As I told the group I was shocked to realize that, in effect, what a journalist pointed out about me was really true. She asked in the course of an interview, ” Is it right to say that you write for one month and edit for the rest of the year?” I started writing in a big way thanks to the National Novel Writing Month, or as it is popularly called,  NaNoWriMo. My first two published novels came from there. This got me used to write the first 50,000 words of the novel during the calendar month of November each year. After that I spent almost the next one year, increasing the word count to over 80,000 words and editing it as carefully as I could.
• Daily Writing Routine: As a retired person, I have the flexibility to write whenever I want. This is so much easier as compared to those who hold a full-time job as well. I find I am at my best early in the mornings or late at nights. I am most sluggish after lunch and would never ever attempt to write anything at that time! I do get ideas from time to time and it’s not unknown for me to scribble a note for myself about some idea that has occurred to me or came to the fore based on a some recent observation.

There are really no hard and fast rule about these things, are they? I would recommend that you stay with what works for you.