Indie Authors: Time Management Challenges

Welcome to Indie Authors Second Wednesday Thingy-ma-Bob. In case you haven't heard of it, that may very well be because I can't recall the name at the mo, but it is a group of fabulous Indie Authors offering each other support and offering everyone ELSE a bit of a view into the world of this new ever-changing thing..





As to Time Management...



If you think my title implies you are going to find answers here, I will just give you a heads up now that I don't have them.



I just need a bit of a vent on the matter.



Cuz see... I have a lot of obligations, some more critical than others... I am a full time worker which is the only reason my family isn't starving on the street. I am a mom. I am traditionally published with obligations to people who have my name on a dotted line... and I am TRYING to be an Indie Author with all that entails...



You know... writing, editing, formatting (several versions), publishing, promoting...



I am TRYING to do it all, but some days it feels fairly impossible.



Take last night for instance:



I had a blog to write *waves at all of you*

I had prizes from a promotion to send out.

I had revisions for book 7 to enter.

And I had book 8 to finish writing. (my NaNoProject is books 7-10 for my serial)



And on Monday I had a medical procedure (just preventative) that caused me to be 'out of it' half of Sunday and all of Monday.





THANKFULLY, I was ahead on NaNoWriMo, so partially losing 2 days isn't the end of the world.  (I'm sitting at about 29K)  Though losing most of last night because nobody warned me the Windows 8.1 update would take that long really irked me. Especially as it would have been totally unnecessary if Windows 8.0 didn't suck so bad.



But enough grumbles... How do I TRY to cope?





Depends on the thing. The writing to me, isn't optional. It is my identity. I try to WORK AHEAD as much as possible... for the obligations to others on writing, too. I still find myself scrambling ALL the time, but if I hadn't tried to work ahead, that is a lot of lateness that would have crashed in on me.



NEGLECT MY FAMILY. *cough* I don't recommend this strategy, but it is one of the few things with any give. My kids are both teens and prefer it this way. It is only my husband who gets annoyed. Mr. Tart would prefer I cleaned more and parented more actively.



Learn the publishing IN PIECES. I am publishing serially—100 page installments of a longer story. The one-at-a-time ones I published to Kindle Direct first—get them OUT THERE, but only learn ONE system right off. It has given me free days to promote my first. Then in December I am going to begin that whole 'learn all the other formats for the collections' thing. Probably I should have published a stand-alone first so I didn't have to keep turning around and doing it all again, but I'm not known for doing things rationally... I CHOSE self-publishing because I wanted to do a serial and it was the only way. (my temperament is really better suited for traditional—I'm just not a details girl)



So that's my story and I'm sticking with it. How about you? Any time management tricks you want to share?



HA!  Indie Life!  That's it!  Find the list of authors here!