ProAm Tips #4
Many books about indie publishing and self promotion tout the importance of maintaining a blog, building a readership, and establishing a rapport with your readers, trying hard to deliver top-quality, thoughtful content and reliable updates.
They also tout the importance of building a network of contacts among peers and reviewers to get your work read.
They ALSO stress the importance of this, that and the other.
What about the WORK? I spend as much time writing every day as I possibly can. I’m a writer: I have things to do. Books to write. I have a limited life span, and too much to do already?
How do you balance all of these jobs when you’re an independent author?
God only knows. Three days ago I finished a first draft. 80k words of a book churned out as quickly as I could type. Writer’s block is not for me. And the new manuscript is already 25k. What does it mean?
It means I’ve got to choose between what I do, and being successful at what i WANT to do. I want to be popular, i want to make enough money from my books that it is my job. I want to spend each and every day doing what I was meant to.
Sometimes that means putting -off what I SHOULD do.
You cannot shortcut the work. But some work is more important than other work.