The Creativity Project: Next Steps
Working on the next steps for the main reason for my creativity project: publishing my novel and earning money from my writing.
Some days I hate my brain. I either get sucked into time blindness where I can’t focus on anything because I have plans for later or I fixate on the wrong things. Lately, that has become a problem as I try to work out the next steps needed to self publish my novel.
And part of the problem is that I decided to document the journey on YouTube. Which means I have even more things I want/ need to learn so I can make better videos.
I gave myself the perimeter of one hour of research a day. Do you see the problem yet? I forgot to tell myself what type of research I needed to do. So I was all over the place, learning about ISBNs and ballet (one of my books has a ballerina in it) and YouTube thumbnails and pretty much anything else that came into my mind.
Now all of this research is helpful in its own way, but not all of it right now. Some of it I don’t need for months, so why am I looking at it right now.
Right, because I gave myself a deadline and my brain freaked out.
This week, I’m taking a step back and looking over the very next steps I need to do for my book. Everything else can be set aside until I do these steps.
They are:
- Put alpha reader edits into the main document. Nothing else can move forward without these because most of them are misspelled words.
- Convert the document to a Google doc to make it easier for beta readers to leave comments.
- Research questions for beta readers so I can get better feedback on the novel.
- Research editors so I can start pricing out that part of the process and figure out what types of edits I still need.
- Find beta readers.
There is no step six until I finish this list.
Now, once my book is in the beta readers’ hands, I can move on to cover art, marketing, and which platforms I’m going to release my book on, but for now, I need to keep my focus tight to the next steps.
This will keep me from the complete overwhelm that will derail my journey. And I need to keep remembering that it’s one step at a time to get to my goals.
Small steps add up, even if they don’t feel like it in the moment.
What are you working on? How do you deal with the overwhelm? Let me know!
