My typical writing day
By Michelle Davies
The title of this blog post is a bit of an
oxymoron because, in my world, there is no such thing as a typical writing day!
My day job is that of a journalist – I write
features for women’s magazines such as Marie
Claire and Stylist and I also do
copywriting for some high street retailers. So my writing day usually depends
on what freelance commissions I’ve got on the go and which looming deadline must
be met first.
Being an author has to fit around my day
job, so I am – for want of a better description – a ‘binge writer’ when it
comes to novels. I usually spend two or three weeks working flat-out on my book,
then stop and go back to the day job when the work demands it.
But when I’m in a novel phase, so to speak,
my writing day is pretty consistent. First I drop my daughter off at school
around 8.50am – luckily for me, her school is on our street so our commute is
about a minute on a good day, two minutes if we’re dawdling! Then I’m at my
desk at 9am, ready to start.
I’ll have a quick read of what I’ve worked
on the previous day but I refrain from tinkering with it too much; I edited Gone Astray as I went along, which I now
realise made the process much more drawn out than it needed to be. With my
second novel, Wrong Place, out on 27
February, I bashed out the first draft in six months, then got stuck into
editing it.
I tend to write until about noon when I
break for lunch, which is usually a sandwich in front of the telly watching an
episode of Friends – I find it gives
my brain the break it needs! Then I write for another couple of hours before my
daughter needs collecting from school at 3.30pm. If I’m in the mood, I’ll carry
on while she’s in bed, but the reason I went freelance in the first place was
to spend more time with her, so I make sure my writing fits around her, not the
other way round.
Thank you for hosting me on my first ever
blog tour and for supporting Gone Astray.
I hope you enjoy the book!
About Michelle Davies
Michelle Davies
is a freelance journalist, having worked in house on magazines including Elle, heat magazine, and
Grazia. She now writes for lots of different magazines, including Marie Claire and Stylist, on lots of different subjects, in between writing novels.
Find out more about Michelle on her website and also on Twitter - @M_Davieswrites
Going Astray
By Michelle Davies
Published in paperback by Pan Macmillan (20 October 2016)
ISBN: 978-1447284185
Publisher's description
Lesley and her husband Mack are the sudden winners of a £15 million EuroMillions jackpot. They move with their 15-year-old daughter Rosie to an exclusive gated estate in Buckinghamshire, leaving behind their ordinary lives - and friends - as they are catapulted into wealth beyond their wildest dreams.
But it soon turns into their darkest nightmare when, one beautiful spring afternoon, Lesley returns to their house to find it empty: their daughter Rosie is gone.
DC Maggie Neville is assigned to be Family Liaison Officer to Lesley and Mack, supporting them while quietly trying to investigate the family. And she has a crisis threatening her own life - a secret from the past that could shatter everything she's worked so hard to build.
As Lesley and Maggie desperately try to find Rosie, their fates hurtle together on a collision course that threatens to end in tragedy . . .
Money can't buy you happiness.
The truth could hurt more than a lie.
One moment really can change your life forever.
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