{Tour} Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios

A Day In The Life

A Day In The Life of Heather Demetrios

I write full time, so I’m pretty lucky in that what I do each day is totally up to me. I cannot even begin to say how grateful I am for that. Back when I had a day job as an ESL teacher, it was pretty exhausting coming home to write after teaching all day. Of course, when you have a lot of time, it can sometimes be easy to get distracted by social media, so I often create rules for myself to keep my work on track.

Generally speaking, I try to write between four and eight hours a day. I have to write at least 2,000 words each day, unless I’m revising. I’d say, on average, I write about six hours a day but it just depends on what’s happening on the page and whatever else is going on. Sometimes I’ll work on just one book, but other days I might work on more than one project. The rest of my time is taken up by the “business” of writing. There are tons of things coming from all directions throughout the day—an email or blog post that needs to be written, something to do with marketing, checking out the next book cover…it can be any number of things. Some of the businessy stuff can take up a pretty big chunk of time, others take just a few minutes to answer a question or two. I work until my husband comes home (he’s a high school teacher) and then there’s dinner and some TV (we just got caught up with House of Cards). Then I’ll usually read and do life stuff—run errands, whatever. I wish I could say I made time to clean, but I don’t. My apartment is pretty disgusting.

My day starts at around nine in the morning and I go to bed between one and two am. I try to start writing right away, coffee in hand. Otherwise, I use all my best energy of the day on answering emails and getting lost in the social media whirlpool. There’s a lot of talk about how important it is to write first thing in the morning because you still have access to your subconscious and your connection to that pure artistic place that hasn’t been tarnished yet by the worries of the day. I find when I just get to it that I am far more productive. I usually break for lunch around one or so and while I’m eating, I’ll check my Twitter and all that stuff. Then I get back to work for another three or four hours, making another cup of coffee around three or so. If I’ve reached my 2K words and feel like I’m okay to stop for a while, I might spend the later afternoon on the more businessy stuff.

I usually write at home in my office because I’ve tried to create a space that inspires me. But, I live in a tiny NYC apartment, so sometimes I’ll leave after I eat lunch and write for the rest of the day at one of the coffeehouses near me. The walls tend to close in after a while. I live in Brooklyn and it’s basically full of writers, so the coffeehouses are pretty great. For a while, I was working at the same coffeehouse as Libba Bray, which was sort of surreal.

Right now, I’m trying to find a way to integrate some physical activity into my life because it’s just really bad for your body to be sitting at a desk all day. I also think it’s harder to get a nice flow when you’re not out in the world, experiencing stuff. I always set aside time on the weekends to get out into the city and go to a museum and out to eat—whatever my husband and I are up for. And, of course, I make time for reading at the end of the day. I can’t write without it!