Getting up at 4:15am is a good start to the day. It’s only half past five and I’ve already done a weights workout, showered and dressed for work, packed my lunch and had my usual two eggs scrambled on toast with half an avocado, and a glass of water with lemon.
Being a lark isn’t for everyone. Some are night owls who’ve only just settled into a dream state when I’m rising with the sun. That’s fine. We’re all made differently and need to find our own most productive hours. I know that by the time I get home from work at 6:45pm, the last thing I want to be doing is focusing on working from home. I’m exhausted. Heck I’ve already been up for 13-14 hours. I need my 7-8 hrs of shut eye per night, even more so now with the growing baby inside me.
So writing has been left for the train ride to and from work. I have to admit, it’s been more productive then I could have anticipated. Yesterday, with all my gibberish I exceeded three thousand words. I wonder if I can reach a million by 31 December 2015. I worked out I’d have to average about 2700 a day. Some days this seems like a million in itself while others it’s a piece of cake. I’m a creative lass who loves her numbers so having a numbers goal is a good way to keep me motivated and feeling like I’m achieving something.
What’s the point of a million words? Practice. Practice. Practice. The more you write the better you get at it. While not everything I churn out is going to be of stellar quality there’s a good chance that at least a a quarter of it will be salvageable. That’s still 250,000 words - a novel, multiple articles, short stories, blog posts. It means learning through practice. It’s doing rather than talking about doing.
Yes, I’m well aware of the risk of severe writer burn out. That’s fine, I’ll deal with it in 2015. The thing is I want to get better. I want to become a better writer. Ok is not good enough. Good is not good enough. I want to be a bit better than good.
But then again sometimes I think it’s not the writing that’s the problem. Nor is it the discipline or the passion. I have all three. I’m capable of writing a decent article. I have the discipline to get up in the morning put butt in chair and write. I have the passion to write every day even though sometimes I don’t feel like writing at all.
My problem is the marketing. I’m terrified of marketing myself to the public. When someone learns about my passion for writing I shy away and become this self conscious twelve year old wanting to hide behind something, anything, just to avoid the confrontation. What in the world am I afraid of?
Unfortunately, selling yourself is a fact of a writers life if they want to become successful and earn a living. No one is going to come looking or you if they have no clue you even exist. Why would they bother when they have easy access to so many other writers who aren’t afraid of a little bit of rejection? Writers who are willing to get their names out there, to query, to pitch ideas, to call editors, to meet them for lunch, to write blogs, and set up websites, and self publish books, and be proud of what they’re doing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
I need to become one of those writers. I need to become a marketing machine until marketing no longer feels like the scariest thing in the world. It’s about taking small steps to get my brand out there, to create a brand that can be marketed and make my writing dreams come true. Heck, I’ve got a minor in marketing for my Bachelors degree, marketing should not be a problem. If people laugh then that’s their problem. They’re not worth my time or my friendship anyway.
So yes, I can have a goal of writing a million words in 2014. It’s a hefty goal to have but it’s one that will help me in becoming a more confident writer and uncover my own style. Slowly, I’ll work on the marketing too and become a confident writer who can and does market herself. One step a time a time. One day at a time. One marketing tactic each day or even each week. It’s a start and waking up at 4:15 am has nothing to do with it if I’m wasting my time surfing the Internet.
Do you thing marketing easy as a writer?
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