Welcome!

Sept 22, 2005

Good Morning! And welcome to Janie’s Journal or should I say "Blog". Several students and teachers in the last two years have requested I start a blog that will give an overview of what my day is like as a writer…So here we go.

I will just start out with an average day. I am generally up around 4:30 or 5:00 am and because I feel health is an important issue for writers (because we sit for so long), I generally start with about 30-45 minutes of exercise. After that I will do research reading. Since I do not read fiction I have to spend many long hours reading books that teach me about the history I am going to write about. I generally read for about two hours.

After this, I get cleaned up and dressed for the day and get into my office around 9 am… Sometimes it is earlier/sometimes it is a bit later.

In the office I first read all my email and try to answer as many as I can. I generally receive about 150 pieces of email, which includes teachers and students asking questions, business letters from my publishers, questions from students I mentor, and questions from Ask the Expert program from Yahoo. This generally takes a couple hours. There are days that I can only get a few letters answered and I have a backlog for the next week to catch-up on.

If I have calls to return, I generally do that after the email.

If I am working on a book project… this schedule is completely turned around, as I don’t do anything but write and everything has to be put on hold.

If I am not working on a book project, I generally have 3-4 other projects in writing that I am working on… Right now I am tweaking a film treatment and working on an interpretive manual for a historical organization… Generally I will write for 3-4 hours before I take a break.

If I don’t forget lunch, I just grab something small and get back to work.

I will “generally” be in my office until 5:00-6:00… If I am on a roll and working on a project… I am sometimes working until after 11:00. Writing can be work if you work at it.

One of my favorite quotes: “Some people dream of worthy accomplishments while others stay awake and do them!” - Author unknown.

Your Pal in Writing,

Janie Lynn Panagopoulos