Productive writer = happy author

My blog has a new look! What do you think?

Giving my blog a facelift has been an item on my never-ending to-do list for quite some time, but I just kept putting it off. I finally put an afternoon aside and got to work, changing the tag line, adding tabs for readers and writers, and changing the whole look and feel of the blog. I personally like it and I hope you do too.

Honestly, I’ve been down with a head cold for almost two weeks, but I’m happy to note that I’ve been quite productive. Not only did I keep up with my daily word count and give my blog a new look, I completed admin tasks necessary due to the merging of my paperback and eBook publishing distributors, promoted my latest book with an online book promotion, scheduled a book signing for next month, took part in an online webinar relating to author platform and also took part in an all-day online writer’s conference.

And now, with everything I’ve learned in a short-period of time, my head is swimming…I mean, seriously swimming and waterlogged with information. Due to that fact, I feel the need to organize, catalog, decipher, chart out, map out and make sense of all the tidbits of details circulating through my author-mind.

That tends to happen whenever I attend a writer’s conference like the one earlier last month or take part in an all-day online conference, as I did yesterday. The bulk of what I learned from the conference yesterday was mainly about marketing, and this is in addition to the author platform webinar, as well as a book launch webinar only a week before that.

I don’t believe I’m signed up for any additional webinars or conferences, so now is probably a good time to take a step back to evaluate what I’ve learned and figure out how I can utilize certain marketing steps that will benefit me the most. And just going through the notes I have now from the conferences, there’s plenty of information for me to create to-do lists that will last me through the end of this year. However, in order to stick with my business plan, much of what I’ve learned will be focused on after the first of the year.

There’s the acknowledgement that I should take a step back, along with the fact that I’ve had good momentum with my own writing, specifically number 5 of the mystery series, and I would like to keep it up without getting bogged down with too many to-do lists when it comes to marketing or platform building. I have to also consider time away due to upcoming holidays and other events, one of which is NaNoWriMo if I decide to join this year, not to mention “me” time for self-care so that I can hopefully avoid getting sick again. Besides that, at some point I have to figure out when to get on my editor’s schedule; if I reserve a spot too soon, I won’t be ready when my time comes up; if I wait too long, she won’t have any spots open when I’m ready for her services. It’s a dilemma that can be avoided with some planning, which is why my business plan is important. If I continue to follow it, the plan is meant to help me stay on task with a schedule so that I can set and meet deadlines.

So I’ll continue to work on my series, as I attempt to complete the current tasks on my business plan, while I also put together marketing to-do lists for the coming year based on what I’ve recently learned. Each will tick off a box for my creative self, my business side and the student in me and each will give me much to look forward to.

But right now, I’m going to take advantage of some “me” time and enjoy a nice quiet evening with my family and a few zombies (I’m a Walking Dead fan J).

Have a great week!