A Writer’s Life

This weekend was a good example of what life is like for a professional writer:

  • I wrote an article about writing DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE WAKING NIGHTMARE for MJ Rose’s excellent Backstory blog.
  • I traveled to San Francisco to speak at a writers conference.
  • I  proofed the copyedited manuscript for my fifth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, which has to arrive in NY no later than Feb. 23.
  • I proofed the galleys for my novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, which have to arrive on my editor’s desk no later than Feb. 23.
  • I revised the manuscript for my sixth DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, which is due March 1, but that I need to finish by Feb 22, so I can stick it in the FedEx packet with the copyedited manuscript for DM #5… because I am leaving on Wednesday to attend & speak at Left Coast Crime in El Paso.
  • I drove back to L.A. from S.F…and thought about the plot for my seventh DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel.  I made  some notes when I stopped for lunch.
  • I posted some articles on my blog.
  • I wrote some notes for a network pitch meeting that’s set for Tuesday.

And this was a light weekend… I didn’t have to write a script or write a chapter in a book.

Grumpy Goldberg

Ian Hamet over at Banana Oil regularly reads my blog and thinks I’ve been grumpy lately (though he thinks I wasn’t  grumpy enough with the people I met at the San Francisco Writers Conference. Did I mention that they didn’t have a single copy of any of my books for sale in the conference bookstore? Grumpier writers than me would have walked away from the conference in a huff… but I’m not prone to huffs).

So I did a quick scan of my posts here over the last few weeks… and Ian is right.  It looks like I’ve been using my blog mostly to whine and complain (which proves, I suppose, that I really am a professional writer).  I’ll try to be more upbeat in future posts.