BALANCING WRITING WITH BUILDING AUTHOR PLATFORM

[Alberta]

Rachele wrote: "I have found it to be a difficult juggling act to work on building my author platform while still carving out time to write. I am still trying to achieve a good balance between the two. I find myse..."

I read somewhere a good balance was a 30/70 split in time 30 on networking/platform building - it seemed to me a reasonable split - am now working out how to put that into my writing routine - have taken a few weeks off serious writing to explore all the sites including this one to bring them all up todate and work out how much time it takes to interact with them - so that hopefully when I return to writing I can try the 30/70 split and stress levels will diminish!:) all the best

[Robert]

I'm afraid I have nothing much to add to Rachele's query because I think she hit the nail on the head. It's all about prioritizing. I began to make some headway when I made the discipline of compartmentalizing very concrete.

I took a piece of graph paper and divided it into three slices: Journal Articles/Book/Blog. For every day that I was planning on putting in an 8 hr. day writing, I aimed for a certain proportion of time for each, say 3/3/2…..and stuck to it. This worked for me.

In retrospect it looks a little crazy but like I say, it worked for me. The method reinforces the maxim that genius is largely about perspiration, not inspiration.

[Richard]

8 hours a day to write! That would be a dream. Only on rare occasions like when I have been on vacation have I been able to achieve that. Unfortunately, holding a (fortunately) successful day job,plus domestic responsibilities when I get home, I am lucky if I have an hour a day to write, much less network, and clearly the latter is the part I have found harder to do.

[Lauryn]

I'm a big fan of Hootsuite.com they allow you to schedule posts on Facebook and Twitter, so I can take one day, and schedule posts for the next week or next month. That way if I don't have enough time for social networking I know I won't completely disappear from my followers radar.

[Hákon]

I try to write something everyday, but I rarely get 8 hours straight. That would be great. Robert, dividing the time 3/3/2 seems like a very good plan.