In my mind, I am orderly, in control, and my day is perfectly structured. In reality, my office is a mess, my diary is double-booked, and I seem incapable of saying no when someone, anyone, wants something. I plan my day, then wait for the inevitable spanner in the works, and it rarely disappoints!
Joy Ellis
On the whole, with different strengths, my partner and I are a pretty good team. We are both retired; Jacqueline from the Police Force, and me from spending most of my working life in floristry. We now live in a Fenland village with three Springer spaniels, and believe me, whatever I imagined my life would be like as a writer, it isn’t this. I mistakenly thought that retirement meant having plenty of time to do the things you always wanted to do. This is a fallacy! I have never been so busy.
Maybe because of Jacqueline’s profession, or maybe because I’ve always loved mysteries and crime thrillers, I started writing police procedural crime novels. So, how does my day work?
I am at my best early in the morning when I’m half asleep, and I like to have the computer up and running by 6am. This is fortuitous, as Jacqueline goes to the pool for an early swim and a game of badminton at that time. If the Muse is with me, I write solidly for two or three hours. I’m a bit of an organic writer; I have an original idea, then sow seeds and see what comes up. Often the characters hijack the whole thing, and it becomes like watching a film, with me furiously writing down what they show me. After breakfast, it’s back to work. I love walking the dogs, as the fen lanes are a great place to work through a plotline or plan your next murder, but sometimes I just need to go with the flow if the writing is going well and Jacqueline is more often than not chief dog walker.
I cannot write after lunch. My creative energy plunges to zero. I’ve tried to push through, but have been found on several occasions, fast asleep with fingers still poised on the keyboard! I have learnt that if I’m struggling, to walk away and not fight it. So that’s when I allow myself to deal with all the other things that life throws at you. Early evening I catch up with mail, messages and the myriad of questions that stream in from social media. I try to answer everyone as quickly as possible. Without my lovely readers there would be no point in writing, and I think it’s imperative they know that I value their taking the time to contact me. Then late evening, as the day retreats and the phone stops ringing, I start writing again.
My day can be chaotic, but it is always spent in two worlds; the real one, and the one where my main characters hunt murderers!
Joy Ellis has been chosen as Audible's breakthrough crime author of 2018. Her novel Their Lost Daughters is narrated by Richard Armitage and will be published on the 14th June on audible.co.uk.