DUNE 7 BLOG

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The Daily Routine

The alarm goes off at around 6:30 in the morning. I'm generally a morning person. I do my best imaginative and creative work early in the day when it's still cool outside and the coffee is fresh in my system. (I'm even willing to get up at 4:30 AM if I've got a good mountain climb scheduled, but that's a different story.)

After I listen to the news headlines, I climb out of bed and fix the first cup of coffee for Rebecca and myself. (Unlike me, she's NOT a morning person.) Then I work out for about half an hour, make breakfast, shower, then go to the office to read my e-mail. Rebecca drives off to Curves, a local workout place.

Catherine, my assistant, arrives at about 8:30 and starts her daily routine (often going through a pile of stuff I've left her the night before). By about 9:00 AM, I reread my notes for the next couple of chapters in METAL SWARM, print up the chapter descriptions, then head outside with my tape recorder to start writing/dictating.

This conveniently gets me out of the house before the phone starts ringing with business calls. I walk along the local streets, bike path, or trails, talking to myself, dictating chapters. (See the November 29 blog about my writing method.) I keep walking until I have finished two chapters, no matter how long it takes. Some days I'll go on an actual expedition to Rocky Mountain National Park or some other long hike, and then I'll complete as many as five or six chapters; most days, though, I'm back home between 11 and 11:30. I started METAL SWARM in the middle of March; since then, I have dictated 128 chapters (out of 135, so I'm almost done).

When I get back to the office, I return a few important calls, answer some e-mails, write letters, until I break for lunch. Rebecca, Catherine, Diane (Rebecca's sister and her assistant), and I generally eat together, catching up on the various projects we've got going. Rebecca has other books in the works in addition to running all the business aspects of our company. During the afternoon (in between phone calls!) I stay in the office editing, either cleaning up the first-draft chapters Catherine has typed or, until a few days ago, editing the near-final draft of SANDWORMS OF DUNE. Other times I proofread book galleys (the HUNTERS typeset pages should be arriving here in a few days).

Catherine and Diane go home around 3, and I edit for a couple more hours before making dinner (I enjoy doing most of the cooking). In the evening, Rebecca and I watch movies or TV shows that we've recorded. Because we've both worked on material related to film or television -- Star Wars, X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, etc. -- it's actually part of our "job" to keep up to date on current genre programming. While I'm watching TV, I keep busy with writing work that doesn't require such intensive concentration: filing royalty statements, filling out forms, signing autograph sheets (I recently did 10,000 copies for HUNTERS), even writing a blog entry or two. At the moment, I'm rewatching GLADIATOR; I had seen it in the theaters, but Brian recently told me it was one of his favorite movies, so I decided to check it out again.

By 10:30 my brain is too tired to do much else. My habit is to take a nice long jacuzzi bath, during which I read a book *I* want to read, for enjoyment. It's the only time of the day I can just enjoy a good novel. (I'm currently reading SHAMAN'S CROSSING by Robin Hobb and JUDAS UNCHAINED by Peter F. Hamilton.) Between 11:30 and midnight, Rebecca and I go to bed.

Then the alarm goes off at around 6:30 the next morning, and that's the way it continues, seven days a week.

--KJA