Getting Down to Business

I may not have been writing yesterday, but I put in a full day's work, and then some. What kind of work does a writer do when she's not writing?

I probably spend at least an hour a day on promotional stuff -- social media activity, reading social media to be able to respond and share stuff (a way to stay present and visible without spamming the world), blogging.

Yesterday, there was a lot of e-mail back and forth to set up a school visit for next month (my first! I'm a real YA author now!).

I put together some proposals for workshops I could give at writing conferences. This is something I'm going to be pursuing for next year because most of these conferences pay for the speakers to attend -- travel and hotel. Writers are also readers and are good for sharing word of mouth. So it's like getting paid to promote, plus you get to attend the conference, which is good for networking and learning.

I read a book on how to create a personal brand. I looked up some of the books this author recommended and found that one I want to read is at my neighborhood library.

I proofread a short story and sent it to my agent, then had some e-mail back and forth about how best to use this story, other possible similar stories I might do, and how we might want to approach cover art for these stories. That led to some research into artists and illustrators.

I brainstormed ideas for possible stories.

Today, I already went to the library to pick up that book and a reference book for the next Rebel Mechanics book that I had on hold. I found some other material on marketing.

I need to do more work toward finding an artist who does the kind of thing I have in mind.

I need to develop a series description for the Fairy Tale series to update the Amazon listing.

I want to do a status report of what I've done this year and what I have planned for the next year to share with my agent so we can do some strategizing.

I hope to read the books I got at the library and do some of the exercises on developing a brand identity, messaging, etc.

I really need to catch up on my bookkeeping after all my summer travel.

I hope to start reading the reference stuff for the next Rebel book, and there are some documentaries I have saved on the DVR that relate to that, but that falls into the category of being related to the actual writing part of work.

So, time to get down to business so I can get to the fun part of my job.