085: The importance of "thinking" time as part of the book writing process

This episode of Indie Author Weekly shares the vital importance of “thinking” time as part of the book writing process.  

What do I mean when I say “thinking” time?  

Basically, that’s any time you’re thinking about your book but not actively writing it. For me, this often happens when I’m out walking or kayaking, or lying awake at night unable to sleep, or just daydreaming at random. Many people find that any kind of mindless task, such as doing household chores or showering etc, is a good opportunity for this. This doesn’t happen when you are sitting at the computer or writing in your journal.  

“Thinking” time can be passive or active. The passive version is when something just springs to mind, unbidden, when you weren’t thinking about your book at all. The active version is when you are trying to focus your brainpower on your book, and working through ideas and such in your mind. 

Both are equally important! Even if you typically do most of your book’s “thinking” time in a passive fashion, I would still encourage you to deliberately carve out time to do the active version of it. It will enable you to channel your ideas, make decisions around plot, and resolve any issues you might be struggling with in your book.  

We often discount “thinking” time because we can’t quantify it, the way we can with a word count. This is a huge problem. If you are only concerned about getting the words on the page, and you don’t consider the underlying themes and tone and characters of your story, then you won’t be able to tease out the nuances of it, and you’ll have a “flatter” story. We don’t want that. We want our books to have depth, substance, a three-dimensional angle. The more that you understand the story, the better your book will be.  

TUNE IN to this episode to find out why "thinking" time is so important, plus a real-life example and how to make it work as part of your own book writing process...  

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