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David Rollins is an action-thriller author based in Sydney. After a career in advertising, he made the switch to writing and has since produced thrillers such as his Vin Cooper series, which included Standoff, War Lord and Ghost Watch.
When David writes, he keeps to a strict schedule to balance life with his children, work and writing. He outlines a typical working day. “My typical writing day was I would get out of bed; my desk is in my bedroom. We’ve got a large bedroom and I just sit down and start tapping away and I assist getting the kids off to school, write until midday. Then I go for a run or I go flying or something and then I come home in the afternoon and I’d write again.”
Set aside time to write and edit
There’s a set routine in the afternoon as well. “When the kids come home, I help them with their homework and at 8pm I keep writing and I probably get around 2,000 or 2,500 words done each day. Then the next day I edit the previous day’s 2,500 words to get me back into the story.
“All the time in between, I’m thinking about conversations, playing them forwards and backwards, thinking about the plot, what’s going to happen, where’s it going to go, even though I do have a synopsis. The nuances of the subplot just keep playing back and forth in my head and somehow it just comes out the next day.”
David’s tip: Do you still like your book?
“As a writer, ask yourself whether you’ve got a good idea. Ask yourself whether you enjoy your characters. Don’t stop writing and edit the stuff – put the book on the wall, put the words away for a few weeks and then come back to them when they’re no longer yours and you can look at them dispassionately and kill the bits that just don’t work.”
Listen to the Australian Writers’ Centre’s spine-tingling Murder and Mayhem podcast here.
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