All the things!!!!!

By the conventional schedule, today’s post should be a non-fiction post. And, it is, in that the things I’m talking about are very real.

Last month, I put out a business post Looking Where We “Dare Not Look” discussing hiring someone to help with the backside work of a writing business. The tldr on that post is that we should consider hiring in help to handle the non-writing stuff so we can focus on the writing stuff.

 For today’s post, I considered things we do as non-fiction writers that are behind the scenes work we have to do ourselves (or at least have a hand in). (Note: we can try to skip this stuff but there’s a serious risk of ending up right beside the guy who called a single shot muzzle loading pistol a belt fed fully automatic machine gun and people who say Nelson Mandela needed to check his “white privilege”)

We’ll talk about several of those writer specific prewriting tasks on the blog. That’s part of why we’re here. But between today’s thinking and last month’s post, one topic rises to the top (and fiction folk should pay attention too; you’re not immune!). Whatever we choose to work on, it’s possible to have too many projects going at once. It’s possible to get too many things happening and drown in the details of stuff that’s happening or failing to happen while we’re busy doing something else.

Sometimes we see something shiny and new and want in. Sometimes a project is more complicated than we thought it was. Sometimes the folks we’re working with have issues (It happens… On the conference side of my house my star sales and vender person had to drop out last month and as soon as I had her replaced my education outreach person had to step away…). Sometimes the challenge will be completely unforeseeable (truly random). But complications happen.

Sure, we want to do all the projects, but how much can we really do? What can we get help with? Which projects are really important? Sometimes we have to make choices and hard decisions. Sometimes we need to set it all out on the table and prioritize.

Here are some thoughts for when that happens:

• Don’t sink the ship! We have a core purpose in what we do. Focus on things that support that purpose. Avoid things that detract from it.
• Sink the ship! If our core purpose changes (which shouldn’t happen often) we need to change what we do to align with our new purpose (and then get back to not sinking the ship…).
• Bring in help. I hate to say it, but I don’t know everything. Napoleon Hill taught that while getting an education can be expensive, hiring knowledge can be much cheaper. We don’t have to do it all (hiring an accountant is a thing!) and we don’t have to know it all (there are books and search engines, but there are also content area experts. I.E. just because you mention heart surgery on page 14 doesn’t mean you have to become a heart surgeon, you can talk to one and get the information you need!).
• Prioritize. Some of those projects can wait. Some can probably be dumped. Focus on the projects that are really important, not just the one with the scary deadline or the one that sounds good at the moment.
• Use suitable tools. Use the tools and techniques that actually help you produce good content. I’ve written about using different writing tools before. Figure out what works and dump the rest.
• Use good organization. This is like the tools. Find a good system to keep track of your information and use it. I know this isn’t the shiny/glittery part of what we do, but it saves time for doing the shiny/glittery stuff in the long run.

There are lots of interesting projects out there to work on and write about. But we can’t do all of them at once. We have to make decisions and choices based on what we can really do and what’s important to us. Once we’re doing those things, we’ll get a lot farther.

Choose the best things, dear reader. Find success in your projects. I’ll see you next post.