Balancing The Creative With The Business

BALANCING THE CREATIVE WITH THE BUSINESS

It's hard sometimes, to know how to both put your best foot forward, but also stay true to yourself, your work, your books and everything else. I can't, and won't, claim to be an expert at marketing or being an author or running a business because I don't have massive sales to back me up, and while I do feel like I reach my audience a lot of the time, I don't think I've made it as an author, but maybe that's because the goalposts keep getting moved? Who knows!

At the end of the day, being an author, indie or otherwise, involves having to have some business sides of your work. I can write books, and all of that but if people don't know about them, how are they going to buy them? So I have social media, and I have my posts there, and my videos on YouTube, and these blog posts and everything else that I do to keep my name out there, and to keep people aware of who I am, and what I'm doing, but sometimes it's very hard to keep that going, while also trying to keep that creative well refilled and such.

I promise that I'm not here to complain about author life and promoting. I'm here to basically give you some of my tips on how to balance being both creative and the admin/business side of things. I can't promise to be an expert, but these are things that have worked for me.

#1 SCHEDULES ARE YOUR FRIEND
I know that for a lot of people, schedules don't work. They either have a lot of things going on in their lives that they have no control over. Like kids, or a day job, or other time commitments, or their brain just doesn't work like that, and that's okay. If it's something you've tried and it hasn't worked, maybe my other tips will help.

But for me, the way I got into a stage where I could balance both writing and all the other things I needed to do author wise, was making sure that I had a schedule. Either a planner spread that told me what and when I should be doing things. Or on my iPad calender, keeping a note of other admin things that I gotta do. That way I can batch, which I will talk about in a moment, and I know what I'm supposed to be doing when.

#2 BATCHING CONTENT WORKS
Now again, if you don't have a lot of time, you might not be able to do this one either, but I found that making all of the next month's stuff in the previous month helps me so much. I write vlog scripts for the next month, I write blog posts for the next month. I make all my promo images a month in advance. I record all my authortube videos a month in advance (where possible) and I make sure that as much as I'm able, I stick to the plan.

Now sometimes life happens and you just can't. As someone with several chronic illnesses, I know that my body doesn't always let me do the things on the planned day and I have to move things around to manage it, but I do find that if I manage to get it done, it helps clear the decks for those days when those things are due to go live. I don't have to panic about making time on a Monday to write a blog post. I don't have to rush around on a Wednesday to get my video recorded, edited, uploaded, captioned. It all just works really well a making sure I have more time to get on with writing.

#3 LIMITING TIME CAN HELP
I don't know about you but I sometimes struggle to make sure that I don't spend hours on YouTube, or Threads, or Blue Sky and while away working, i.e writing, time on playing around with my socials. So I have a rule. I'm allowed to go on at certain points and do things, and once I'm done with work, I can spend as much time as I like there, but during that blessed writing time? Only if something is due to be posted, and even then, it can be put off.

This has really helped me get to grips with doing things only when I have time for them. It stops me from getting dragged into social media and losing a whole bunch of time doing not much. So either having a limit, or telling yourself it's a reward for finishing, can be a great idea, and you gotta be strict with yourself about it.

So yeah those are three of my tips when it comes to balancing creative time while also doing all the things you gotta do as an author that aren't writing. I hope they help!

Any questions? Lemme know in the comments!

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