Dealing With Lost Time

Writers, like anyone with a small business, must get their names and their work out in front of our desired audience. We are, in fact, in business. Once we hit publish or sign the publishing contract we are officially taking the leap of faith that we can sell our product which for us is our writing work. We have to not only be able to be creative, weaving together interesting characters with captivating storylines, but we must also be master marketers, highly motivated sales people and the public face of our work as well.

We flood social media with our cover reveals and release parties. We spam groups along with our family and friends endlessly asking for support and shares. We even make public appearances on occasion to promote and *fingers crossed that someone wants us to* sign our books. We hold our breath as we obsessively watch the numbers fluctuate on Amazon. We order copies to show off to our friends and pray we sell at our signings and events. Some of us are multi talented showing off not only our creative writing styles but also our unique artistic visions with self created cover art.

We work daily to grow our fan base pushing our names to the outer reaches of our known universe then hope it catches someone that will become a supporter helping to drive our work even further on down the line. It is tedious and sometimes extremely frustrating but we do it because we believe in ourselves and our writing. So what happens when something comes up that pulls you away from the constant promoting?

What happens when you lose faith, or get sick? When your day job gives you so much time you can barely make it through that job let alone go home and start another? What do you do when your personal life falls apart all around you and you cannot focus on writing let alone promoting? It is arguably one of the most difficult parts of what we do because all the hard work you put in until that point can be undone in just a few short days or weeks if you have not established yourself strongly enough.

This is where determination kicks in. For me I had to take a step back for nearly a month and that caused me to lose twitter followers, Facebook likes and worse I lost my momentum for my writing projects. It was my stated goal to have Survivor ready for beta readers by the end of this month and the draft of Sharing Strength completed as well. However after working six days in one week then following it up with a ten day flu and then a potentially relationship ending fight with my significant other I have been unable to write.

I have managed to keep working on my charity series but there is the concern of not having enough stories for any one book to go to print yet. I am trying but I am not there yet. I refuse to give up however. I will get back to promoting, make to writerly to do list so I can keep myself on track and accountable as well as finish my current projects preparing for my next appearance that right now is scheduled for October.

Life knocks us down but we have to get back up no matter how much work the lost time may have erased. If we believe in ourselves then it is worth it to continue to try.