A day in the Life of Dannika Dark

4:30 am: Alarm clock begins to beep. I slam my hand down on it.

4:50 am: Alarm clock begins to beep. Sigh. I submit, and crawl out of bed.

5:00 am: I sit in the dark living room and begin writing or editing. I seem to have the most creative ideas early in the morning.

6:00 am: I glance at the clock and wonder if I should go to work early so I can get home early.

7:30 am: After writing for two and a half hours, I realize that I’m late for work.

During the drive to work, that’s when ideas start to happen. I’m in the middle of rush hour traffic, or some mad hatter just cut me off, and I get an idea. I carry a notebook in my car and in my purse at all times to scribble down those ideas.

8:00 am – 5:00 pm: These are the hours when I use the left half of my brain to earn my rent. I’m providing technical support to a team of people, developing procedure documents, training, and other duties that make me want to slam my head against a wall.

5:00 – 5:30 pm: I’m usually singing “Born Free” in the car while blasting down the road at 50mph. Well, that’s my Friday song, but when the whistle blows, I cannot get home fast enough.

5:30 pm – Midnight-ish: I have no structured writing schedule because when I truly sit down to write, I do it when I’m feeling inspired. I don’t force myself to adhere to a schedule. That’s something I retain for editing and other tasks. There are a number of things that have to be done: Marketing, editing, writing; while on the other hand, I like to be socially active, dabble in digital art, and look up random things on the internet like “what is a Ding Dong made out of?”

I’d love to give the answer that I sit by a window, staring at a rolling green meadow with jackrabbits feasting on tufts of grass, while I work out in my head the most poetic scene that has ever been penned in a book. But the truth is—I live in chaos. I hold down a regular job, and manage to fit writing somewhere in all that. Before I began publishing my novels, my schedule was manageable, and there were no deadlines. Now I’m finding there are so many more tasks that need to be done, and currently I’m working on my full book cover for “Sterling” to get it paperback ready. I outsourced the interior formatting to a company that specializes in this, because I’m slowly realizing that I need to give up control and stop convincing myself that “I can do it all.”

There are hours in my day I need to claim as my own, so I can retain my social life and not become a hermit. However, writing is a passion, and even if I’m in the movie theater, I get ideas about my stories, and have to write them down. My brain is always working like that.

I had a really interesting conversation with someone yesterday who was of the opinion that writing was just a hobby, and not something that a person should seriously pursue as a career. It’s a pastime, it’s a “filler”, and you shouldn’t waste time focusing on that part of your life when you could be building your career and making more money.

Without imaginative thinkers and artists, we would have no museums.

No libraries.

No radio.

No television.

No movie theaters.

No variety of department stores.

No theaters with dance shows and plays.

If that were the case, then what would we be doing on our weekends? How enriched would our lives be without artists?

So a typical day in my writing life is simply taking advantage of any free time I have to do what I love to do, and hope that others will benefit from it.

Want a chance to win one of the following prizes? 

1 Box Set of The Mageri Series (Sterling, Twist, & Impulse)
Book Cover Cards (4×6) (Sterling & Twist)
1 Set of Key chain
1 Car Charm
1 Surprise Gift from Justus himself.

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