Templates as Time Savers

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

There are all sorts of time savers out there.  They’re not really shortcuts, but they definitely help to both make projects less-overwhelming and quicker to tackle.  One of my favorite time-savers is the humble template.

Here are four of my favorites: 

The outline template.  Yes, I have a very basic template for a cozy mystery.  That’s not to say that I won’t deviate from it, but having it there makes the initial stages of planning a book much easier.  Outlining isn’t my favorite activity, and this helps it go much quicker.

The back matter template.  If you have a back matter template, you simply have to update it each book.  It’s a no-brainer.  Mine has an ‘about the author’ (again, make sure to keep yours updated), asks for a review, gives my contact info, reminds readers that they can find my book in different formats (like audio),  gives my acknowledgments, and provides a list of all my books.

The newsletter template.  Newsletters can be a time-consuming activity (even if you only send them at release time, as I do).  It makes it so much easier for me to have an established template on MailChimp that I can simply update each time.  For more about their templates, click here. 

The canned response template.  Instead of spending a lot of time responding to spammy guest post requests, I use Gmail’s canned response feature.  I have different canned responses for various frequently-received emails (and sometimes I’ll just use the template as a base and add something more personal to it).  To read more about canned responses on Gmail, click here. 

For ideas on other ways to use templates, see: 

Jenny Hansen’s thoughts on setting up a manuscript template in Word

Janice Hardy’s plot template to keep your story on task

Tessa Emily Hall’s marketing plan template

Do you use any of these template tools?  What shorts of time-savers do you use?

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