Top 5 Ways Authors Can Better Deal with Time

For authors, especially those who hold a day job in addition to writing, one of the hardest things is finding time to write, edit, publish, and market all the ideas they have.

I think time can feel like an enemy trying to keep us from getting what we need done. However, it’s not true. Time has no feelings and no agenda. Time is what it is, and that’s it. Time constraints start to feel stressful because of the way we interact with them. So, I thought I’d offer a few tips on how to view time so you see how much you’re getting out of the limited time you have each day.

1. Count everything. Sometimes, we get very involved in things like word counts, or books published. While I would never suggest either of those is unimportant, there are other important things. Being a self-published author is about more than the number of words you write each day or the number of books you publish. To get to the point where you click publish, you have to have your book edited, get a cover, and upload it to KDP. You might need to solicit advanced reviews and then send out advanced review copies. After the book is published, you might solicit reviews from additional bloggers, as well as schedule advertising. Every time you publish a new book, you’ve got to update the “Also by this Author” section of all your previous books. There are tons of things to do. When thinking about what you’ve accomplished during your day, don’t discount the things that you’ve done that aren’t easy to quantify (like word count or books published). If you’ve spent an hour looking through stock images to find the perfect cover, yes that’s an hour you weren’t writing, but it’s still an hour when you were getting something accomplished. Social media is part of your work, too. If you were just playing on Facebook, don’t count that. But, if you were honestly dealing with social media for your author identity, that counts.

2. Write down your accomplishments. I could’ve combined this with the previous item, but I didn’t. There’s a reason for that. People sometimes decide to mentally catalog their accomplishments, but when you do that, you miss things. Writing down what you’ve accomplished each day is a great way to see how you’re using your time and get a sense of how long these things take (this will help you with the last thing on the list). Writing down all those little things you did gives you a great overview of what you’ve done, and if you look back over your lists every couple of weeks, you’ll really see how much you’ve accomplished. Or you’ll see days where you accomplished a lot and days where you accomplished little, and if you care to figure out what made them different, you can take the time to do that.

3. Build in breaks. My husband says I work all the time. And when you’re a self-published author, that’s very easy to do. There’s always something else you can be doing. Always another story you can be working on, or a cover to pick, or advertising to schedule, or re-doing the covers of a book that isn’t selling, or rewriting the blurb. But, it’s also important to schedule in a little break time. Your brain, if it’s going to be effective, needs some rest. Really! So, be sure your schedule isn’t such that you never take a break. If you’re feeling overburdened and stressed, take a mental health moment. Even small breaks are rejuvenative. Sometimes I’ll just say, “Enough’s enough,” and go watch some Jimmy Fallon clips on YouTube (some people do heroin; I do Jimmy Fallon — wait, not like that; mind out of the gutter folks!).

4. Don’t compare unless it’s apples vs. apples. One thing people do is compare themselves to others. When Person A posts on Facebook that they’ve written 10,000 words today, finished editing their series, and designed a book cover, it’s easy to say to yourself, man, I’m really not using my time well. But, if Person A is unemployed and has to put out a book if they have any hopes of paying their mortgage, they’re not a good person to compare yourself to if you are gainfully employed in the busiest season of your job and your kid is on a travel soccer league. You and Person A have different amounts of time and different drop-dead tasks that must be done. Now, truth be told, it’s very hard to get an apples vs. apples situation with people because people are all different and have different time constraints. If you do feel someone is in a similar situation as you and seems to be getting way more accomplished, that’s a good time to talk to the person and find out how they’re doing it. You could find that the two of you aren’t as similar as you thought. Let’s say you’re both divorced mothers of two, who write books. Maybe Person A’s ex-husband is an avid soccer player who coaches both the kids’ teams and takes them to every single game and practice. Well, if you take your kids to every single practice and soccer game, then Person A has a huge time advantage over you and you shouldn’t compare. However, if you talk to Person A and their day seems pretty much like yours, then ask them how they do it. You may learn a huge, killer time-saver that you can adopt. Either way, it’s a win-win for you to ask.

5. Be reasonable. I think people sometimes expect themselves to be superhuman. No one is (despite all the awesome comic books, tv shows, and movies to the contrary). We’re human beings and we have to be reasonable when looking at what we’ve accomplished with our time and what we can reasonably accomplish. There are days when you volunteer at your kid’s school, or when your boss is being a complete jerk, or when you’re just super busy (toy store workers in December). You’re not going to get everything you wanted to get done accomplished some days. And if there’s a good reason for it, that’s okay. You need to be reasonable with yourself and your expectations, given the circumstances. Being reasonable is not a license to make excuses. It’s a license to look at your day/responsibilities outside of writing and publishing and determine when you should have used time to do something writing-related and when no reasonable person could have been expected to get something done outside of their other responsibilities.

And that ends my sage (at least, according to me, and I’m right about everything!) advice on dealing with time as a self-published author.

Author: RJ Crayton

RJ Crayton is a former journalist turned novelist. By day, she writes thrillers with a touch of romance. By night, she practices the art of ninja mom. To learn more about her or her books, visit her website or her Author Central page. View all posts by RJ Crayton