I get this question a lot. So I’m going to write this blog post with the hopes it will head off future questions.

How did I write the book? Well, mostly on my smart phone.

(Cue the shocked faces.) It’s true. Probably 75 percent of my first draft was written on my smart phone on a cloud document. The other 25 percent of the draft was written on a laptop or desktop. I own a typewriter, but I needed the cloud to make it work.

I get the question “how” a lot because, in this age, everyone is super ridiculously busy. They are waiting to retire or for the kids to leave the house before they sit down and write. They have great ideas but if only they had the time. My answer is this: you always have time for what you make a priority in your life. And certainly you have a few minutes throughout the day where you have down time. Maybe you are waiting for a meeting to start. Maybe you are sitting in the grocery store line.

That’s exactly how I wrote the book. I had three minutes here, five minutes there, and maybe, if I was lucky, 15 minutes another time.

I wrote the first draft of The Wilding in 60 days. It was messy and ugly, and I dread the thought of someone stumbling upon it one day and reading it. I should really burn it now that I think of it. I’m adding that to my to-do list.

But I had a first draft. And, to my surprise, there was a story there. It wasn’t very good, but it was there.

Then it took me 10 months to edit. But that’s another story.