Guest blogger Mindy Klasky is the author of six fantasy novels, including the award-winning, best-selling The Glasswrights’ Apprentice and numerous short stories. Her latest novel, Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft, is a lighthearted, fictional tale featuring a love-struck D.C. librarian who discovers she’s a witch. A portion of proceeds from the sale of Girl’s Guide will benefit First Book.

It took me four years to write The Glasswrights’ Apprentice, the first novel that I sold. I wrote it on weekends and in the evenings, a paragraph here, a paragraph there, whenever the spirit took me. When my agent called me with the great news that he had sold my novel, he said, “The publisher wants a sequel. I told them you had three. When can you have the first one finished?”

“Um, in two years?” I suggested, proud of myself for trimming my writing time.

“They’ll expect something in a year,” my agent replied.

And thus, I changed my writing habits forever.

After a few panicked months of low production and high stress, I figured out a system that worked for me. I got up every morning at 5:00. I drove to the county pool and swam a mile, then came home and ate breakfast, showered, and got dressed for work. Then, without checking email, without playing FreeCell, without “passing Go”, I sat down and wrote for an hour. And then I headed into the office. On a good day, I could write 1000 words. (Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft, for comparison’s sake, is 100,000 words long.)

Over time, my schedule evolved. I needed more sleep and couldn’t make it up before 6:00. I started a new job and my commute was longer, so my writing time was shorter. I launched a website and a blog, and I needed more of my morning time to keep up with both of them. My daily writing time dwindled; I was lucky if I got 250 words (one measly page) completed.

And so, I introduced Writing Marathon to the mix. One week of vacation from the day-job, plus weekends on either end. Nine days of uninterrupted writing. I could edit a chapter in the morning and write a new one in the afternoon. I could produce 35,000 words — one third of a novel — in a week.

And then, because I thrive on challenge, I started yet another new job, a job that requires a lot of travel. I told myself that I’d write while I was on the road — in airports, in lonely hotel rooms. I told myself that I’d stay up late at night and write, without my husband and my cats to distract me. I told myself that I could turn out a novel in a handful of road trips, in a couple of months.

I lied. I traveled more than one third of my time, and I got nothing written. Not a chapter, not a page, not a word.

And so I’ve gone back to the tried and true. I wake up every morning. I exercise. I sit down at my computer. I write. And I look at my calendar and figure out when I can fit in Writing Marathon. Slowly, but surely, I watch my novel grow. And I tell myself that September 30 — my next deadline — is very far away.