Tuesday, November 1, 2011

For All My Good Intentions, I'm Having Trouble Finding Time

"Time for what?" you ask.

"My writing," is my answer. And I'm sure everyone who read my last post about what it takes to be a writer is going to say, "You're a good one to talk."

When this post appears I'll be out of town--on a cruise with hubby celebrating our anniversary. Oh, I'm sure I'll be doing some promotion like handing out my business cards--especially to anyone with a Kindle. I think I'll probably stick in a couple of my latest books too, just in case.

What's been keeping me busy lately is the promotion for Bears With Us. I've been on a month long blog tour and anyone who has done one knows that you need to promote a new blog each day and go back and visit it periodically to see who has commented and to comment back or answer any questions. In my case, I've had to go back and check on earlier ones, because whoever left comments on the most blogs will get to have their name used for a character in a book.

I've also had a couple of writing jobs that bring in money which took quite a bit of my time. And yes, I have to do them to pay for my promotion. I had two in-person events--one at a book store and of course two days with a booth at the Apple Festival. Though I love to do things where I can actually meet the readers in person, they are tiring.

I'm also doing the rewrites on a different book from the one I'm writing. I'm reading a chapter a week to my writers group and they are great critiquers and come up with some great ideas. The day I do those rewrites, I can't work on the book I'm in the middle of writing. Both have very different voices--and I have to think a bit to switch from one to the other.

I'll get it done, though, I always do.

What are the major challenges to your writing?

3 comments:

Jean Henry Mead said...

My biggest challenge is spending too much time on social networking and blog articles instead of writing my books. It reminds me of an old lament from years ago, "Help, I'm on the Internet and I can't get off."

вебпромо said...

Hi, nice post. I have been pondering this topic,so thanks for sharing.

Marilyn Meredith a.k.a. F. M. Meredith said...

Hi, Jean, yes, social networking and writing posts for blogs are definitely time sucks. I try to do them in the afternoon after my brain isn't as fresh for writing my novels.