Procrastination

Okay, so it’s been a couple of days since I last posted and aside from having created a press release for my upcoming thriller, The Marquis Mark, I haven't done a lot of promotion. Although, I guess, writing and designing a press release, could be seen as a step forward in this department.

Unless you have the ability to dedicated one-hundred percent of your time to the task of promotion, there are always things that get in the way. Life is like that; and it doesn't have to be big things, so you have to be wary. In many cases it would seem that life is conspiring to keep you where you are; challenging you to overcome its obstacles while in search of your dreams. While that may seem the case, you have to also realize that in marketing your book, you need to bring along the same discipline you found to have completed it in the first place.

In writing my first two novels, Tripping on Tears and The Merry Pranked, I decided to use an approach I'd read in a magazine about writing. What it suggested was setting a word count per day. I did. I expected to sit down and write 1,000 words a day, no matter what, and I did. What I soon discovered was that I'd set a goal for myself that very quickly became rooted in stone. In Tripping on Tears, when I approached the chapter in which Safia had to die the book is about an honor killing, so it was necessary I found myself procrastinating, and for the first time those 1,000 words a day weren't happening. By that time, I'd adopted this approach so fully that I now felt guilty for not writing and promised myself I'd make up the days I'd lost. When it dawned on me that the reason for this was the fact I really didn't want to kill off Safia, I'd enjoyed writing her character so much, that psychologically I didn't want to write the words she was dead, I realized what was holding me back, and I set about writing again, and made up for three to four days of inactivity.

As a former journalist, my life was full of deadlines. To miss a deadline was a sin. As a writer of fiction, I'm left to my own devises, but found creating a daily goal or even deadline for myself encouraged me to move forward. How did this affect creativity and inspiration, well, I believe I'll address that in my next posting, as I don't want to go on too long here.

In marketing The Marquis Mark, I believe I have to create my own 1,000 words a day goal; possibly guaranteeing that I spend one-hour a day researching, reaching out and promoting in order to complete the task that we writers most loath the promoting of our books; sure, it'd be fun to use that hour writing, but probably unwise.