Fiction Writing Made Easy

#133: A Week in the Life: 7 Days Behind the Scenes with Savannah (March 2024)

Mar 12, 2024

Savannah Gilbo, an experienced writer, takes us on a week in her life, including coaching writers, growing her email list, and learning from successful book launches. She shares her daily activities, such as crafting emails, attending virtual classes, and recording podcast episodes, offering insights into balancing multiple projects and evolving in her career.

36:24

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Episode guests

Savannah Gilbo

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Take feedback as a tool for improvement, not as an indication of a broken story.

Structured routines aid in managing multiple projects efficiently and prevent overwhelm.

Deep dives

Behind the Scenes of Building a Book Coaching Business

Building a successful book coaching business involves taking feedback and using it effectively. Having a coach or writing buddy can help create an action plan based on feedback, making solutions clearer. Setting up a structured day-to-day routine can ease overwhelming situations when working on various projects. The podcast host shares insights into her work week, discussing projects like attending online classes and giving presentations that keep her engaged with the writing community.

Introduction

2min

A Week in the Life of a Book Editor and Coach: Planning and Commitments

4min

Sunday Evening Dog Food Cooking and Monday Business Planning

2min

Writer's Business Tasks and Coaching Clients

8min

Balancing Two Book Projects and Learning from Successful Book Launches

2min

A Day in the Life of a Writer and Book Coach

15min

Managing Time and Sharing Behind-the-Scenes

2min

“Sometimes it's easy to take feedback to mean that your story's broken when it's not.” - Savannah Gilbo

I’m taking you behind the scenes with me throughout my entire work week! You’ll see how I plan my days, what projects I work on, what I learn from the writers I work with, and so much more!

Read the blog post here!

Here’s a preview of what’s included:

[01:48] Sunday Update - This week will be a mixed bag. I’m taking a 2-day online course from Laura Belgray, who’s sharing a behind-the-scenes look at her most recent book launch. The other fun thing I’m doing is giving a presentation for ProWritingAid’s Romance Writers Week. Also, the third Crescent City book from Sarah J. Maas comes out this week, and I am so excited to read that.

[06:48] Monday Update - Today, there are two big things I need to do: craft some emails for the Women In Publishing Summit, which I'm speaking at in March. The other big thing I'm working on is growing my email list and one of the ways I’m planning to do that is to be a guest on as many other writing podcasts as possible.

[11:08] Tuesday Update - I’m coaching a writer who is working on two stories at once. Working on two projects at once would be hard for most people to handle. However, because this author has two novels in different stages of the process, it allows her to use different parts of her brain on different days.

[16:33] Wednesday Update - The virtual class that Laura Belgray is hosting is about how she launched her book, Tough Titties, and it was awesome. I also have a little bit of a selfish reason for wanting to see what she did because I have a book coming out later this year, and I’m hoping to learn from what Laura did so that I can have a great book launch myself.

[21:03] Thursday Update - It's so easy to second-guess ourselves when it comes to mapping out or outlining our stories. There are so many decisions to be made. If you are a student of my Notes to Novel class, you can submit your loglines for me to review during any of our Q&A calls. If you don't know what a logline is, it’s essentially a 1-2 sentence summary of your story—and you can craft it before you’ve even outlined or written a single word of your book.

[28:57] Friday Update - I am writing a book and it’s an analysis of the first Harry Potter book. It’s a craft book for writers that’s going to dig into the big picture and the small picture to find out why and how this story works so well. This project is something I started 5+ years ago, and it got shelved for various reasons but is now coming back into the spotlight.