A Longer Intro This Week
Focusing on tasks that need to be completed and creating schedules for them is one of my favorite things to do. Recently, I have been arguing with myself about which book I am going to publish next. Surely the answer is obvious, right? Well, not exactly. You’d think that the book I have the most completed words in would be next, however, the first two books in my upcoming collection both have the same amounts of words completed. Then there’s the idea that I came up with a few weeks ago that has been plaguing me—and then, I thought of something to help.
I created for myself a new schedule. I actually found an article on Medium that gave me this idea. The meat of the article itself absolutely did not resonate with me, as it is an article about a woman who went from her 9 to 5 to freelancing full-time, but she has no kids, no pets, no spouse—literally nothing keeping her from reaching her goals in a quick manner. So, my first thought when I read this was: what the fuck is keeping you from putting more time into freelancing? She had a 9 to 5 where she worked 40 hours a week, schedule in 40 hours per week of sleeping, maybe a total of 30 hours eating, driving, doing chores around the house like cleaning, 10 hours per week towards general hygiene, and that still leaves her with at least 40 hours left in the week to put towards writing and hunting for freelance gigs.
Well, even though I couldn’t exactly relate to her situation, it did give me an idea: create my own schedule including each day of the week, times of the day, and insert blocks during the week that are mandatory, such as my 9 to 5, getting ready for work, showering, prepping food, working out, making dinner—all the necessary things in my life that I cannot remove. What is left?
Honestly, a lot more time than I thought. All I had to do was put it into practice. I didn’t write as many words this week as I wanted to, even though I created this new schedule for myself, but I did realize that I have the ability to stick to the schedule. I also noticed there were a lot of little obstacles in my way that I was creating for myself: cellphone usage (particularly on social media) and reading (which I also happen to use my phone for 90% of the time). So, I cut down my cellphone usage, mindful of when I go to grab for it as a tactic to sate my social media appetite, and I have decided that I will only reach for my book (my kindle app on my phone) during my 9 to 5, like during break times or lunch times. I’m hoping now that I’m being mindful of when I reach for my phone, that my appetite for social media content will lessen, and so far, it’s been very successful.
In order to make sure that I got in every type of writing that I wanted to get done, I separated necessities and writing times appropriately for my schedule for each day. There are three days out of the week that I do not write at all now, and there are three days of the week when I make sure I focus on my health (i.e., working out and prepping meals). Even with all of that combined, I was able to figure out how much time I had available each day. I have time to write for 14 hours every week! I separated the times appropriately and made sure that I was focusing on certain types of writing at certain times: when I have longer than one hour available to write, I will focus on my novels, and when I have shorter times to write throughout the week, I put my focus in my blog, browsing freelance job boards, writing articles to submit to magazines, and writing articles for my Medium page.
I made sure to insert one time per week for one hour, I will focus only on content creation, no editing, as editing can be done throughout the week as necessary. I ended up recording an entire week’s worth of content for social media in just one hour. As long as the content ideas flow, this shouldn’t take more than one hour.
Just by sitting down and creating my own timetable in Excel, I was able to figure all this out in about an hour, maybe even less honestly (I didn’t exactly track my time, but it felt like it took almost no time at all). Now that I’ve figured out that my new schedule is attainable, I just need to continue to put it into practice every week to make sure it is sustainable.
The one thing that I do not have time for yet in my schedule is my podcast. Unfortunately, my podcast—and even writing non-fiction articles that I then translate into podcast form—take up far too much of my time, and I was unable to schedule it in. Recording each episode only takes about an hour, and editing each episode takes about two. But researching for each episode takes far more hours than I have available in a week, so until I figure out where to put more time (or I finally have the chance to leave my 9 to 5), my podcast is on hold.
As a smaller side note, unrelated to the above, this past week, I decided to do something I’ve been telling myself I would do someday… and that is place an ad on Bookbub for my book Can’t Control. Honestly, I’m just happy that anybody clicked on my ad. It isn’t that I don’t have any confidence in my work, but I’m no marketer, and I feel like I’m doing my best. I’m very humbled that people wanted to take a peek at my book, and I honestly did not expect to see any “clicks” on my ad on day one after I began the short ad campaign. I gave myself a very limited budget, so the ad didn’t run for long, but I am truly grateful that people have some kind of interest in my writing. If any analytical person looked at my stats, they’d probably laugh, and I wouldn’t blame them. But I wish I could personally thank each individual that clicked on my ad willingly and took a look at my book.
Book Recommendations
Snapdragons by January Rayne, the image for this week’s blog post. I’d like to get right off to a blatant start with that. I enjoyed Honeysuckles (book one of the Shallow Cove Monster Stalker series by January Rayne), but I had debated on whether or not I wanted to put it on my bookshelf. I’m still unsure about that one exactly, but the wheels have turned in the direction of yes, as I know that I am definitely adding Snapdragons to my bookshelf. And the covers are so beautiful that I certainly can’t have book two without also adding book one to my collection!
My Current Read
I finished those books that I had been struggling with! You know, the ones I mentioned prior, the ones I started in April and May. Yeah, I should have DNF’ed them, but DNF’ing books is so hard for me to do. It actually takes a lot for a book to make me want to stop reading entirely, but I have done so with a handful of books. I do have one more to finish that I started in May, and I’ll finish it when I can. But as stated above, I did read one book recently that was so good. Thank you, January Rayne.
My current read is actually Alien Prince’s Mate by Tammy Walsh, as part of her Fated Mates of the Seed collection. I expected it to be quite boring and expected, however, I’m pleasantly surprised at how well it’s written and how interesting the storyline is. I’m about halfway through, and I should be finished with it within the next few days.
Recent Finds Unrelated to Reading
I don't have much this week unrelated to reading or writing. I've spent the majority of my time this week focusing on reading, writing, or my 9 to 5. I've purposefully tried spending my time focusing only on those tasks and working on lowering my cellphone usage.
Recent TV Shows & Movies
This isn't anything new to anyone who knows me, but I've recently been watching a lot of Forensic Files. It's always been one of my favorite true crime shows to watch. I haven't been in the mood to listen to music recently, even while writing, when normally I try to listen to my writing playlists. Though, I did restart watching Nightmare Next Door, which is another true crime show I've always enjoyed watching.