I recently planned the first five months of 2010. The main reason: a full-day, in-person workshop, and I needed to see how everything related to each other. When am I going to be out of town? When am I offering my twenty-four-week Writing Essentials Program? How many nights a week am I teaching? When are my children's birthday parties (and requisite sleep-overs)?
Being able to see that all at a glance helped me plop things into my calendar. Does this eight-week program work here? Nope. Let's try it here. Ah. That works.
How can this help you write or market y0ur book? Why even pay attention to this?
Because it's very easy to schedule in a vacuum or last minute. Think about it. You have a weekend coming up with nothing scheduled. The PTA asks you to help out by cooking two pans of ziti for staff appreciation day. You say yes. You have that easy weekend, right? But you don't think about the fact that you probably need to decorate for the holidays, that report is due first thing Monday morning, and the next week is jammed packed. All of the sudden, baking two pans of ziti isn't as easy as you might have thought.
The problem is that we don't put it all together. I like to call that "My two brains aren't communicating." Here I knew I had this lunch on Friday, and over here I planned on a big work block on December 11. Sometimes we don't always see that Friday and December 11 are one and the same.
When you can see everything at once, you have a much better idea of how to plan your time, how everything fits together, and even where you should do smart things like marketing and networking.
Plan your writing time. If you're working on your manuscript or a book proposal, that takes time. It doesn't just happen. So schedule that in.
Networking. If writing your book is also part of your speaking career or a product to boost your credibility in your business, then look at networking events coming up. Have a workshop planned in June? What networking events can you attend in January through May to start planting seeds?
Marketing. When is your book coming out? Be a smart author and plan your marketing campaign: blogging, Tweeting, Facebook fan pages, talking to writers' groups, talking to your writing group.
Book signings and other author events. When are they? You might want to rethink the idea of doing 20 book signings in a weekend. Plan them out so you can see them. Include travel time and the all-important and often-neglected recovery-from-travel time.
Personal stuff. If you have kids, then this is even more important. Vacations, spring break, concerts, tournaments, practices, festivals, recitals. We can't clone ourselves and have our clone attend these events. It's all us. So include all your non-writing and non-work activities.
When you plan in a system, as opposed to a black hole where everything is its own, disparate event, it becomes part of a whole. This doesn't have to be a chore either. You don't have to get huge, gorgeous calendars, sticky notes, and Sharpie pens. You can do this on your Google calendar or Outlook. You can write it all in a Planner Pad. It doesn't matter. Start planning holistically, not haphazardly or off the cuff.
Your book will thank you.
Great posts! This applies to anyone managing a calendar of events. I plan to spend time this weekend creating my 2010 calendar, and I'll take it through the end of the year. I usually do it quarterly. But why?! :)
Posted by: Antonette Artiz | December 15, 2009 at 11:06 AM