If you want to be a writer in any field, deadlines are something you are going to have to get used to. Even as a novelist, there will probably be times when you need to get things done by a certain date. The same goes especially for other writing-related occupations.

I’m currently working against a deadline and have had occasional moments of wanting to panic about the amount of work. However, there are a few things I learned back in school that help me stay focused and organized to this day:

*Break down the work into sections. This can help you from getting overwhelmed with everything you need to do.

*Set a minimum amount of daily work. If you know that you need to get so much done between now and two weeks from now, figure out how much you need to get done on a daily basis to make the deadline on time.

*Give yourself one (or two, or three…) day less for the above tip. If you give yourself one day less to work on the work part of things, that means you have an extra day to check things over or to finish up if there is an emergency and you don’t make your daily minimum.

*Make it clear to friends/family that you have to work. Letting people know you have a big project to do and that you’ll be working on it for the next x number of days/weeks prevents distractions, hurt feelings, and even gives you a reason to celebrate when the work is done.

*Most importantly, don’t be afraid to ask for help. There is nothing worse than being about to miss a deadline and someone asking you, “Why didn’t you just ask me for help?” Know what you can and can’t handle, and be honest with yourself.

Now I’m off to make the most of my own advice and finish up my goals for the day.

‘Someday, Someday’ may be an awesome song by Thirsty Merc (that has nothing to do with writing), but it’s also the motto a lot of people live by when it comes to accomplishing their goals.

I was cruising around zenhabits and found this guest post titled: 11 Ways to Cure Someday Syndrome. Alex Fayle describes Someday Syndrome as:

“Someday Syndrome: not doing what you want to because you don’t know what it is, because you’re procrastinating about it, or because you have too much stuff getting in your way.”

Sound familiar?

When it comes to working on my novel(s) and getting the first draft(s) done, I am most guilty of the third excuse – ‘there is too much stuff getting in my way’. Be it work (almost all of the time it’s work), life, or just plain needing to take some time to relax before I explode, there always seems to be something else that needs to take up my time. Then, when I go to bed at night, I’m too exhausted to write.

I mention this list specifically because it’s not just about one thing – you can apply it to anything. In looking at it from a writer’s point of view, I think the best piece of advice in the list is ‘6. Ignore the rest’.

It is so incredibly easy to become overwhelmed with writing when you think about how long your story might turn out to be, how much editing it will need, who you will be able to market it to, and will it get published at all? There are a lot of steps, a lot of things to worry about and way too much time that should be spent writing is instead focused on worry.

Take a look at the list and see how you can apply it to your life. Don’t keep pushing off writing and possible publication to ‘someday’.

There is a talk going on right now in one of my author/blogger groups about the difference between book promotion and book selling, and I wanted to talk about it on my blogs.

As a writer, you should know by now that writing the book is just the first step. If you dream of money along with publication, then you are going to have to learn a lot about marketing, networking and book promotion.

I am a virtual book tour coordinator with Pump Up Your Book Promotion, and I have been working a lot with authors to help them promote their books. Everything from setting up a blog to finding podcasts to be a guest on gets covered. Many authors know this and are becoming quite familiar with the virtual tour process.

However, too many authors are still confused about one thing:

Book promotions are not book sales.

My job as a tour coordinator is not to sell your books, strange as that may sound at first. My job is to promote your book. Promotions and sales are two different things.

As much as I would love to sell thousands of books for all of my authors, I can’t. I’m not a salesperson; I’m a publicist. Two different things.

Bottom line? Even if you go on tour (or do some other promotion) and your sales don’t skyrocket, that does not in any way mean your tour or other promotion(s) failed.

The point is to get your name out there so people ‘know’ you. You want to be in the top of the search engines, which will help you heaps when it comes time to sell the books. Promotions and marketing are an amazing help in the grand scheme of things, but they do not directly equal sales.

EREC – the blog to be reading if you are you are interested in erotic romance e-publishing – posted about the New Non-Erotic Romance Epublisher Desert Breeze and I couldn’t help but be amused.

While the topic of this post isn’t quite technically true – Desert Breeze is setting out to be a non-erotic romance publisher and is managing to insult erotic romance authors – you can’t quite help but laugh.

The quote (also quoted on EREC) from Desert Breeze that gets me (as an amateur erotic romance writer) feeling all warm and fuzzy inside is:

“We want to bring back classic romance storytelling without excessive sex to bog down and hide the true element of the story — Love.”

Because sex and love don’t really ever go together.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, I know what they are trying to say – at least, what I hope they are trying to say. Even so, haven’t they read any good erotic romance? Have they only been reading ‘paperback porn’ which has only one mission: get people nekkid and having sex?

Apparently they have if they feel there has been a “saturation of the market with sex-based storytelling and the decline in quality of the actual novels.”

Ouch.

Given that they’re all playing in the romance genre sandbox, you’d think they could put forth their non-erotic romance stance without spitting on the sand castles of the erotic romance members of their social group.

It will be interesting to see if that description will still stay up over the next few months and how other publishers and authors respond.

Or,

Five Ways to Annoy Me (And Any Other Self-Respecting Writer, Agent, Editor, Etc)

Because sometimes things need repeating. These things will guarantee you a place on my bad side.

1. Email me in text/net speak.

Unless you’re paying me a certain dollar amount per page, I’m not here to be your editor. If you don’t respect me enough to clean up your writing, I don’t have the time.

2. Assume you are more important than everyone and everything else in my life.

If I get back to you later than intended, I will apologize for the delay. If you then decide that it’s okay to let me know how important you should be to me and/or how I need to change my behavior for you, then I will not be happy. The day you are that important is the day you become my agent or offer me millions of dollars to marry my unborn child.

3. Don’t do your research and pay attention.

I genuinely like helping people out when and where I can. I review books, I promote submissions calls and writing contests, I’m an online tour coordinator, I’m a freelance editor… If I can help you in any of these areas, I will. But I have my pet peeves and I’m also located in Australia, which makes some things different. Queries are fine (within reason). Assumptions (often followed by negative reactions) are annoying.

4. Assume that you’re doing me a favor.

Yes, I get extra publicity from book reviews, author interviews, etc, but I’m still taking time out of my life to ask you questions, read your book, promote your contest/call for submissions… The favor goes both ways.

5. Disregard or disrespect me because I work from home.

Just because I don’t have to dress up each and every day to get my work done doesn’t mean my work is any less than anyone else’s. I work hard to pay my bills and just because I do it in purple fuzzy slippers on cold days instead of high heels or steel-toed boots doesn’t make me any less of a worker.

In life as well as in the publishing industry, common sense, common courtesy, and paying attention will get you a long way.

As someone who works from home and earns money by working on the computer, the last thing I want to do during my writing time is be at home writing on my desktop. I can’t yet justify the money for one of those little eee PCs, so I got about it the old fashioned way: pen and paper.

(Well, pens. I always carry about half a dozen because I get paranoid about running out of ink.)

One of my favourite places to write, though I don’t get the chance to very often, is on the train. There is something about trains that I find peaceful and inspiring. Sometimes I entertain the idea of getting an all-day ticket and spending the day riding around and writing.

Seeing as I only usually take the train once per week, I’m always on the lookout for other place I would enjoy writing in just as much. That’s why I always have my writing tools with me – pictured above.

The larger notebook is for my work in progress. Tucked inside I have various notecards, ads and envelopes that I have written notes on. The smaller notebook is for other stories, story ideas, etc. The way my mind can go off on tangents sometimes, it’s always good to carry a second notebook.

How about you? What tools of the trade do you carry with you, if any?