Thursday 26 January 2012

Author's Comfort Zone

This post could have also been dubbed "Balance 101". Just a little over three months and my debut novel THE LAST TIMEKEEPERS AND THE ARCH OF ATLANTIS will hit the cyber bookshelves. Sooo much to do, sooo little time. I need a time portal just to get all my marketing and promoting put in place. Plus there’s the website. Ordering promotional giveaways. Setting up blog hops. Joining the appropriate social media networks. The lists—well, they go on and on.

Wait. Stop. Breath.
Authors need to learn to structure their writing life, or their writing will take a nose dive. We need to learn to create balance so that the task of being a writer plus a marketer plus a promoter doesn’t ware us down. So how do we do this? When so much is expected of a writer nowadays?

Simple. Find your comfort zone. Find your personal comfort level with promotion or marketing, do that and do no more. That’s it. Do it. Or you’ll get burned. If you don’t heed my advice, then sure as shooting, negativity will leach into your writing. And that’s the last thing a writer wants! So, stop pushing the zone.
That doesn’t mean writers shouldn’t learn or try new things. By all means learn and try. But don’t hurt yourself doing it. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself that you collapse into a quivering mass of writer goo. As writers we must protect our work—and ourselves. It takes time to build an on-line marketing presence in the book world. Learn this, cut yourself some slack, and prosper.

Image: 123rf.com Stock photo5310009

1 comment:

  1. Well said Sharon, I've been thinking about this same issue. It's easy to get so sucked into a whirlwind of social media and book promotion that you neglect the very thing that made it all possible: writing!

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