Do you want to make money – any amount of money – from your writing or other creative work? Being creative is the least of your worries, and if you’re not careful, you might find that your creative work is where you devote the least amount of your time.

A sample list of everything a writer “should” be doing to create a business around their work probably includes:

  • Blogging or having a robust daily social media presence
  • Publishing short work or articles to keep your name out there
  • Speaking engagements – panel discussions, craft talks, book readings
  • Getting professional headshots
  • Maximizing your bio
  • Attending conferences and workshops
  • Literary citizenship – helping other writers by sharing their social media posts, reviewing their books, etc.
  • Commenting on other people’s blogs or socials
  • Responding to comments on your blog or socials
  • Exchanging critiques
  • Creating and maintaining a website (which has its own lengthy list of tasks)
  • Creating and maintaining a newsletter (ditto)
  • Setting up a business – getting a license; organizing your finances, receipts, and taxes; registering your business name; copyrighting or trademarking your writer and/or business name
  • For traditional publishing:
    • Researching agents, publishers, and magazines
    • Monitoring trends
    • Querying and submitting
    • Staying abreast of rip-offs
  • For self-publishing:
    • Designing books
    • Finding cover artists
    • Choosing a printer
    • Studying best practices, success stories, and big fails
    • Finding the money to pay for it
    • Selling the books

And don’t forget: writing the next book.

And that’s all before you even publish the book. Getting a book into print starts a new cycle of publicity, marketing, event coordination, book store outreach. Selling the book is a third full-time job on top of writing the book in the first place and creating an author brand.

What can you do? 

I have often looked at the above list – which is nowhere near comprehensive – and let loose with a hearty “Fuck this.” It’s simply overwhelming, and there’s no roadmap. There’s no logical order, suggesting that you should focus on Task A and B first, and then worry about C and D in six months or a year. Even experts can’t pare down the list to a top three, not when accounting for any kind of business or career element. They all agree the book comes first, but second place belongs to networking…and your website…and critiquing…and publishing short work…and engaging on social and…

Sophie had an easier time choosing.

Frankly, unless you are already financially independent – or are a stupendously obnoxious Type A – you simply can’t do it all. Even someone who can treat writing as their full-time job couldn’t do it all in 40 hours. Choices must be made.

I’m old enough to remember when the blueprint was Write > Critique > Submit. That’s all you had to do. Publicity was for writers who were already published.

I wish I could do it all. There are parts of the gig I miss – having a table at cons and book fairs, for example, or going to conferences and workshops.  Unfortunately, events are time consuming and expensive. Without a current book, book fairs aren’t a good use of my resources. Conferences also can be hit or miss, in quality of both speakers and attendees.

There are other things on the list I would like to do but have had difficulty launching. Critiquing and having a writing group is at the top. I’ve tried several online critique sites and while they seem well run, I find virtual critiquing antiseptic. I crave the community as much as the critique, even if the facetime is over Zoom. And while I’d like to believe I’m generous enough to critique work without expecting someone to return the favor, that’s a factor as well. Commitment matters.

So, you pick and choose. My priorities?

The musts:

  1. Writing the book

Personal commitments:

  1. Posting on the blog every Monday and Thursday
  2. Sending my monthly newsletter on the first Sunday of every month
  3. Weekly meetup for silent writing time

Things that usually get done, but can slip:

  1. Posting on social media
  2. Contributing to conversations on socials, blogs, etc.
  3. Check email

What I’d like to make time for:

  1. Critique group
  2. Occasional conferences and workshops

That’s a hell of a list, even after I “cut back” to what I consider the necessities. Writing, blogging, and nurturing a bit of community are all significant time commitments, and that’s before considering whether travel time is involved.

Still, there are a lot of things that a writer “should” do that I can happily ignore for a bit:

Tasks without deadlines:

  1. Refresh the website
  2. Refresh the social branding
  3. Serious networking

Things that can wait until after the book is near or completely finished:

  1. Book layout and cover design
  2. Researching comps
  3. Anything that costs more than $100
  4. Any business question
  5. Any publishing question

What might wait until I’m retired:

  1. Podcast

It grinds my gears that I don’t have time for a podcast, but even a short monthly conversation would require 12 – 15 hours to properly plan, write, record, edit, and post, and that’s not considering any effort to promote it. Heavy sigh.

How do you choose? Other than your writing, what activities do you engage in? I know some of you aren’t chasing the business side, which probably means you are smarter than I am. Are there other non-writing writing activities you make time for?

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