What the Indie Author borrows from Jekyll and Hyde

A couple of weeks ago I nearly succumbed to total energy overload as I tried to flip between marketing Book One and writing Book Two. 

As part of attracting new readers to the Selkie Moon Mystery Series I was:

- writing and retweeting interesting tweets to my followers

- finding new people to follow on Twitter, including book bloggers

- following and posting about writing on Facebook

- writing a guest post about The First Lie for a U.K. book blog

- approaching reviewers to review The First Lie

- reading blog posts about using social media more effectively

- contacting Amazon about publishing issues

- increasing my activity on Goodreads

- reading other indie authors, especially other BRAG Medallion Honourees

In between I was writing Book Two which involved:

- wrangling with a new character who was defying all my efforts to be tamed.  After five days of rewriting the same scene over and over I submitted to the personality she insists on keeping. The story will now suit who she is, not how I want her to be (which is as it should be but I forgot that for a while).

- removing whole episodes that weren’t working after the editor’s reading of the first draft and finding new ways to introduce the elements and characters that were in the axed scenes

- writing new scenes and being open to serendipity as to how they might add depth to the emerging story

- trying to completely immerse myself in the fictional world of Selkie Moon, which is how I get the inspiration that creates the psychological layers in the mystery.

By using both writing and marketing energies alternately throughout each day I ended up in such a shredded state, that I skyped my life coach and he reminded me: be present and be authentic in everything you do. By flipping I was doing neither. I returned to the timetable I’d abandoned to do more marketing: writing most of the day and doing some ‘maintenance’ marketing after I write. I also devote one afternoon a week to marketing matters. It’s better.

The creative writing energy is where I need to focus right now. It’s what brings joy to my life – and it’s the only way to make the next book as good as the first.

When Book Two is ready to be published I’ll put a block of time into letting the world know about Books One and Two.