When Do I Write the Books?
Posts, Newsletters, and Other Non-Novel Writings
Blogging and Newsletters and Facebook — oh my!
Time for an update on where I’m at. I currently have 24 subscribers and 17 downloads of Regent, my prequel novella! That’s an additional 4 people on each list — hurrah! But I’ve now paused my Facebook ad and am going to focus on group promos on BookFunnel for now until I get closer to the release date for Royal (book one of my series).
Which write is right?
When I decided I was going to have a crack at being a full-time writer, I knew that would involve a lot of writing. Duh. But I thought it would be long days ruining my eyes at my computer, making up weird and wonderful things to upload to Amazon for people to buy and read.
I didn’t really understand how much businessing was involved (no matter how many times they warned me on the Self Publishing Show podcast, and I really didn’t factor in how much non-novel writing there would be.
Distractions are the enemy
I’ll admit, my routine got interrupted recently and I’m just getting back into it, but I haven’t written a word for an actual book in at least five days now. That’s not to say I haven’t been writing. During those five days, I’ve been writing blog posts, social media posts, newsletters, *cough* this article *cough*.
Most of the reason why that’s resulted in an absence of novel writing is my own poor planning. The rest is procrastination. Which tells me that as I go about reestablishing my routine, I need to make sure I have a specific time for novel writing where I don’t trudge off down my procrastination rabbit holes — no matter how productive they otherwise are.
Because if I can master all this ancillary stuff, but then I have no books for people to read, I’ve essentially wasted a whole bunch of time and money.
New plan
My plan going forward is to split the day into thirds. One third will be for household tasks that have to be done, as well as exercise for me and my small fluffy overlords.
Ignoring that part of my day, the remaining two thirds that are dedicated to authoring will be divided into actual writing and assorted business things. That way I can make sure that the books keep moving along.
I also know I need to plan the time for assorted business things appropriately, because this is the biggest rabbit hole risk.
My plan is to start batch creating. One day can be creating Facebook and Instagram posts — which still take me a lot of time to figure out, both in terms of content and image selection/creation. One day can be a few blog posts.
At this stage I don’t think I’ll batch create the newsletters. I’m planning on sending them out once a month and so want them to have contemporary information in there. Also, it’s probably not a big ask to write one a month.
This series will also be a daily addition. Maybe not the finished article, but I need to carve out the time to record what it was I did, and what the results were. Ok, you’re right. Productivity-wise I can make my notes each day but then batch create some of the articles. Geez, task master.
Anyhoo, having spent most of the day watching Self Publishing Formula courses (so good) instead of doing the batch creation my task list envisioned, I suppose I shouldn’t draw this article out to avoid getting stuck into it.
So I’ll sign off now and go write some social media posts.
Right after I play with the dogs in the backyard.
Oh, and the laundry needs doing…
Cheers, K.T.
