Writing Corner - Balancing Writing, Editing, and Promotion

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As a writer, you want to devote your time to your characters, their story, and the world they inhabit.  Sometimes an idea for a scene or a plot springs into your head as you are cooking or cleaning and you feel compelled to write it down or make a note on your phone to be revisited later.  You feel a sense of accomplishment when you finish writing something, whether it be a chapter or the whole book.  Writing is what we do.

As a self-published author, we may not have the same sense of enthusiasm about editing our work.  Even a writer with a publishing house doesn't necessarily look forward to working on copy edits.  To reframe this reluctance, I like to think of editing as an opportunity to refine and revise my work and make it the best story I can tell (in the time allotted). Oops, did I accidentally have someone that left a scene earlier speak dialogue?  Good thing I caught that.  Does an action scene make sense, are the movements clear?  Here's an opportunity to clean it up.  Did I realize that a part I cut to splice in another section of the book, never actually made it there?  Well, I'll do my best to fix it.

And as thrilled as we are to write, and as tolerant as we may be about editing, one thing we are definitely not fans of is promotion.  We may enjoy interacting on social media, but actually 'promoting' our work, we're not as comfortable doing.  So, we may seek to avoid it as much as possible.

But part of being a published (or self-published) author is the business side.  We want readers to enjoy our book and tell us about it with their reviews.  We look for ways to get our books into readers hands.  And yes, we would to see an increase in our bank accounts, which is why we don't often offer free fiction on the internet.  But admitting to this dark corner of being an author is a shameful event and we don't like to dwell on it.

I realize this so I've taken steps to not allow myself to shirk on my promotional duties.  I have a Twitter account and I force myself to tweet links to buy my books as much as I tweet about Netflix show reviews.  I have a Podcast to increase my social presence and I've recently added a YouTube channel specifically for book promotion.  Plus, I have this website.  So in between chapter samples, informational videos, and spoilers about upcoming books, I will put out a tweet or post to promote my books.  But I'll spare you today.  😏🙌😌

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