Planning My Writing Year

Or how I’m looking ahead at a hopeful professional year

There is a point every December when my thoughts turn from the present to the possibility of the future. I pull out calendars, planners, and notebooks, and I begin to dream about what the following year could be. 

This year, that happened during the second week in December. I handed in my second round of developmental edits for Betrayal at Blackthorn Park, the second mystery in my Parisian Orphan series. After a year spent writing and editing at near-breakneck speed, I could finally take a breath. I had no immediate deadlines for the rest of the year. For the first time in months, I let myself sit back and take a look at 2023 as a whole.

To say that 2023 was exhausting would be an understatement. For good reason, I’d agreed to write two books with nearly overlapping deadlines of June 1 and July 1. One was a historical novel—title still to be agreed—and one was Betrayal at Blackthorn Park. I planned out the first half of my writing year, diligently putting in time to promote two paperback releases in January of 2023 and one brand-new hardcover release in March. I planned out daily word counts and editing timelines. I knew what I had to be doing every day. 

And then it all fell apart. 

Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash

You see, I also got married in 2023, and despite having a groom who shared the burden of wedding planning with me every step of the way, it was a lot. Our free time became consumed by choosing a venue, guest lists, transportation, florists, and more. As exciting as it was to be planning our wedding, it was also exhausting having so little mental downtime, and that exhaustion bled into my writing life. 

I am an author who can usually adhere to a first draft writing schedule fairly closely, however 2023 was the year that proved that even best laid plans can sometimes go very awry. I needed everything to go perfectly (with a few grace days for illness, etc.) to fulfill all of my professional obligations with grace, and it didn’t. 

So why am I bothering to look ahead to 2024 and plan all over again? Because I want to take the lessons of 2023 and apply them to 2024 in order to have a better year. 

So here’s what I do to plan out my writing year:

1. First, I look at release dates and other immovable dates. Realistically, things do slide in publishing. Twice in the past two years, my publisher has moved my books on their calendars into slots they thought would be better for publication than the originally proposed date. However, I try to treat these dates as set in stone when planning because I have to start somewhere. Those dates go into my calendar, as well as any trips or dates I know I will not be available to work like (other people’s) weddings, bank holidays, etc.

2. Next, I ask myself what I will owe people this year and when those things will likely be due. Do I have a first draft due to one editor in July and another in December? Will I be working copy edits for my autumn 2024 release in February? Will I need time to create and execute a marketing plan that promotes that book during the summer? The answer to all of those questions is yes.

Writing a book for publication isn’t just about the actual writing. These are the steps that I go through every time I put out a traditionally published book:

• I write the first draft and conduct at least one extensive self-edit before sending it to my editor. Ideally I will also have time to have a second readthrough for timeline and character continuity too

• I work through developmental edits based on the editorial letter my editor sends me after reading my first draft. In this case, I absolutely have to have a continuity readthrough because I don’t always edit linearly but instead fix the biggest problems in the manuscript first and then deal with the small stuff

• Sometimes I will work through a second round of developmental edits depending on how dramatically the book changed between drafts one and two, or sometimes my editor will send me line edits, which are a close look at the language of the book

• I review copy edits (this is the first stage of what is called “production”)

• I review proof pages, which is when the book is typeset to look like an actual book. This is the last chance to catch typos and continuity issues, but it should not involve major edits

• Sometimes I review queries that the professional proofreader or production manager has raised about the proof pages

• I create my own marketing plan (usually heavy on content marketing) and schedule and coordinator with the publisher’s publicist and marketing team to make sure that what I’m doing and what they are doing compliment each other

• I execute that marketing plan including direct emails to my newsletter list, articles, social media posts, and more

• I actively promote the book on and around release day through appearances, interviews, and more

Then, when all of that is done, I move onto incorporating that book into my regular backlist promotion.

Each of these steps takes time, so I try to account for that time in my calendar. After publishing more than a dozen books, I have a good idea of how long these steps will take me and when in the publishing process I should be working on them. However, this is more art than science. Every book has its own personality, and sometimes books can take a surprisingly long time to move from one stage to the next.

3. Once I’ve planned for the best, I plan for the worst. As I mentioned above, sometimes books take longer to write or edit than I expect. Sometimes production team deadlines differ from book to book. Sometimes, like in 2021, I get really sick for three weeks thanks to a bout of Covid and I lose all of that extra time I thought I had right before I’m supposed to hand in a first draft. Sometimes I lose focus on a manuscript because I am promoting a new release as happened around the release of The Lost English Girl this March.

Because of these challenges, I’ve learned to build in additional time at every single stage of the process. I sketch out a rough idea of when things will fall on the calendar, and then add time with wild abandon. I am the kind of person who will commit to a deadline and will deliver at the cost of health, sleep, and other important factors if I’m not very mindful of health, sleep, and those other factors, so I am working on being more realistic about what can be done in the time frames I’ve laid out for myself. 

4. I talk to my agent. I’m in the happy position of having a 12-year-and-counting relationship with my wonderful agent Emily Sylvan Kim. I’ve learned that it’s best if I am honest with her about what I think I’m capable of while flagging anything that I suspect will present a challenge in the coming months. Often she can help me speak to my editors about tweaking my schedule to make sure that I can stay on track and deliver a book, thus making everyone happy in the process. 

5. I plan breaks. This is one of the learnings from 2023 that I’m taking with me into 2024. I need quiet time. Fallow time. Time when there is nothing on my schedule. I have no doubt that one of the reasons I found myself feeling completely tapped creatively by the summer was that I hadn’t given myself the stretches of calm that I need to recharge.

When I worked a day job, there were natural ebbs and flows in the working week, month, or year, even when I was in the unrelenting world of breaking news journalism. Slow news days are called slow news days for a reason; they are a break from the speed at which journalism usually moves. Every journalist breathed a sigh of relief when the occasional slow news day presented itself, and many of us had pet projects we worked on during these quieter times that allowed us to explore areas of interest that mentally recharged the spark and desire to do day-to-day work.

For 2024, I have already marked a week on my calendar each quarter that I am calling my Reading Week. These are weeks where I am planning on setting aside whatever I am working on—whether that is drafting, editing, or promoting a book—to just read what interests me. That can be a history book that relates to a story idea I’m mulling over, or it can be a stack of novels on the bestseller list I haven’t had the chance to tackle yet. It doesn’t matter, so long as the focus is on not focusing on my usual work. 

6. I give myself space for play. Another big learning of 2023 is that I was all work and little play when it came to my professional life. I love writing, and one of the joys of being an author is getting to experiment with that. 

Enter things like this Substack where I am giving myself an outlet to just play around with ideas and experiment. For me, creativity has always thrived on a healthy mix of excitement as well as discipline, and I’m hoping that play will help me maintain that excitement. 

And that’s it. I keep all of this in a master calendar that I have in Notion for flexibility, and transfer portions of it to a paper planner as plans firm up. As I’m actually working through things, I set quarterly goals using Sarra Cannon’s HB90 Method. Day-to-day, I keep a record of what I did during the work day, including word counts because I find it helps me stay realistic in the future about how quickly I can do things. And perhaps most importantly, I adjust where needed because a plan is not set in stone.

I’d love to hear how other authors do (or don’t) plan their writing years, and what you’re looking forward to trying in 2024.