Keep the End Goal in Mind - Tips for Writers

The best advice I received early in my writing career was to write your next book. Marketing, research, learning, training, editing, querying, appearances, conferences, social media, and life in general all vie for your attention and limited resources. All of these things are important, and you have to decide where you’re going to spend your time.

Your Craft - Make sure you are learning and growing as a writer. Find a writing partner, critique group, or developmental editor to help you hone your skills. You need to learn and improve as you progress on your journey. But don’t get bogged down in the self-help and training that you don’t have time to write and practice.

When I first thought about being a writer, I bought every “how to” book I could find. I ended up spending a lot of time (and money), and some of them weren’t that helpful. I was reading help books rather than writing. I finally decided to go through my collection. I kept four or five of the best and donated the rest to the Friends of the Library. It’s the same with training. You need to do workshops and classes from time to time, but not to the detriment of your writing.

Your Brand - These days all publishers expect authors to have an established platform , interact with readers, and find ways to market their books online. This is key to selling books and keeping contracts. Again, authors need to balance the work. I try to guard my writing time and reserve other time for marketing, business, and social media tasks. Look at your situation. What can you afford to hire help to do? My rule is to figure out my budget. Determine what I can do and pay professionals to do what they do best. And don’t always look at your writing tasks. You can farm out daily tasks, too that may free up some of your time, especially if you still have a day gig (e.g. yardwork, cleaning, dog-walking, etc.).

Balance - You do need to balance all the parts in your life. I looked at my spare time. I like social media and web design, so I decided to do those myself. I check my social media sites several times a day. I also try to multitask and do some while watching TV or movies. I did look at my TV time, and I was watching a lot of bad TV. I record what I really want to watch and speed through the commercials.

Your current book will help you sell your previous books. Meaning you should see additional sales from readers who want to know what else you’ve written. Multiple books also help you if you want to do larger ad campaigns.

There is a lot that goes into the writing life. (More than I ever thought of when I dreamed about being a writer.) I am constantly learning new things and trying different marketing ideas. But just remember to protect your writing time. Writers do a lot of things, but their primary goal is to finish their work in progress.