Process: Finishing One Book While Starting Another

A metal bridge stretches ahead. The post by Elizabeth S. Craig is on the process of wrapping up one book while starting another.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Some of my more popular posts have to do with something pretty ordinary and (unfortunately) boring … process.

Everyone’s process for writing and publishing books is different. Maybe that’s why we’re curious about what works for other writers.  I know I like reading those types of posts, too.  I never know when there’s something that might be helpful to try or something that I could work into my own writing process.

Keeping all of that in mind, I thought I’d share my own process for finishing a book and starting another book. It’s fresh in my mind because that’s been my last couple of weeks (some of this I touched on in last Friday’s post).

The process for the book that’s releasing

While the book is in edits, I start loading the book and the book’s metadata up on distributor and retail sites (which can be, if you use a lot of distributors, something of a tedious process).

I draft a newsletter to announce the upcoming release.

I make sure the book is linked to the rest of the series on Amazon and other retail sites.

I update my website, LinkedIn, and Goodreads.

The process for the next book in that series

Whatever book I’ve just finished, I start immediately outlining the next book in that same series.  I’ve found this is a big time-saver for me because my head is still in the series. It takes a lot less time to create situations for the characters to respond to, etc. Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Bluebird with beak open and 'Twitterific Writing Links' by ElizabethSCraig superimposed on the image

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

A weekly roundup of the best writing links from around the web.

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 39,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

 

I did have a new book release Tuesday. :)  Find out more about Fall to Pieces here.

Business / Miscellaneous

Creativity and Inspiration / Miscellaneous

Creativity and Inspiration / Goal setting

Creativity and Inspiration / Inspiration

Creativity and Inspiration / Productivity / Fitting in Writing

Creativity and Inspiration / Productivity / Writer’s Block

Creativity and Inspiration / Productivity / Writing Quickly

Creativity and Inspiration / Writing Life

Genres / Miscellaneous

Genres / Fantasy

Genres / Historical

Genres / Horror

Genres / Mystery

Genres / Picture Books

Genres / Poetry

Genres / Young Adult

Promo / Miscellaneous

Promo / Ads

Promo / Blogging

Promo / Newsletters

Promo / Websites

Publishing / Miscellaneous

Publishing / News / Data

Publishing / News / International Publishing

Publishing / Options / Self-Publishing

Publishing / Options / Traditional Publishing

Publishing / Options / Traditional Publishing / Querying

Publishing / Process / Book Design

Publishing / Process / Distribution

Publishing / Process / Legalities

Writing Craft / Miscellaneous

Writing Craft / Beginnings

Writing Craft / Characters / Antagonists

Writing Craft / Characters / Arc

Writing Craft / Characters / Development

Writing Craft / Characters / Protagonists

Writing Craft / Dialogue

Writing Craft / Lessons from Books and Film

Writing Craft / POV

Writing Craft / Punctuation and Grammar

Writing Craft / Revision

Writing Craft / Revisions / Critiques

Writing Craft / Scenes

Writing Craft / Settings and Description

Writing Craft / Voice

Writing Tools / Miscellaneous

Writing Tools / Apps

From My Blog:


 

The top writing links of last week are on Twitterific: Click To Tweet

Another Go at Pre-Orders

A picture of dollar bills and coins.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This is my third post on pre-orders. As you might remember, I wasn’t much of a fan of them when I tried them (over much of 2016).

This time I decided not to run a long-term pre-order.

I didn’t like the pressure of feeling like I was under the gun to deliver. It’s been a while since I wrote for a traditional publisher and maybe I’ve gotten used to my deadlines getting softer.

This time I waited for my book to be finished and then put it up for a very short pre-order while the book was being edited (knowing I had plenty of time to finish my edits before uploading the final version).

I put the book up on both Amazon and Draft2Digital’s retailers (some of which are set-up for pre-orders, some aren’t) on January 2 for a January 17 release. I picked a Tuesday, since a lot of traditionally-published cozies are launched on Tuesdays and many savvy readers have an eye open for releases.Continue reading

Creative Challenges for Better Productivity

A wet paintbrush lies on a colorfully streaked canvas

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Sometimes I think that we need something to spur us on and get us going.

We need something different to help us either grow or keep ourselves engaged. Maybe we’ve been working on one book for a long period of time. Maybe we’ve been working on a particular series so long that we feel we’re getting stale. Maybe it’s that we’ve been writing a single genre.

Sometimes we’re just weighed down by our story.

For me, the best thing I can do is to shake things up a little bit. 

Write at a different time of day.

Write in a different place (my favorite is the library).

Read something really good. For me, this is usually something in a genre I’m not writing. Or, maybe, I’m reading a mystery, but it’s not the same subgenre. Or I’ll read an inspiring autobiography or biography on an artist.Continue reading

Focusing for Better Productivity

Close up of a woman's face with a brown eye.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Just a year or two ago, I had so much that I was trying to multi-task that I got easily overwhelmed.

What’s more, I felt really scattered.  There were so many different things to work on that I’d work a bit on one thing (maybe adding my books to a publishing platform) and then start working a few minutes later on something else that seemed equally important and pressing (maybe the book that I needed to finish).

The biggest problem was the very fact that everything seemed equally pressing.  This feeling that I needed to really scurry to get things done spurred the multitasking.  I felt as if everything were an emergency.   I considered all of my tasks equally important…personal and professional.  And if I thought of something that needed to be done (buy a birthday present for a friend whose birthday was in a week), then I felt as if I immediately wanted to check the task off my list.

A couple of things got me to reevaluate how I was handling my priorizing of tasks.Continue reading

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