Sometimes indie life feels like wheeling about in a limitless field with your arms flung out, screaming WHEEE! at the top of your lungs. There are so many possibilities! You could do anything! You could write under a pen name! You could write under FIVE pen names! You could write short stories! You could write literary books about the love life of your printer! You could write entire tomes about a single day in the life of a character (wait, no, T.V. did that one)! You could write an entire series of interconnected short stories!
SO MANY THINGS YOU CAN DO.
As should be obvious by now, I'm having a bit of a choosing problem. I remember reading a study before that said you shouldn't put links to too many different places to buy your books because readers will get so overwhelmed by the choices that they won't buy at all.
This is sort of what happens with something as open as indie life. So many choices! So many ideas! All of them achievable! But not if you freeze and do none of them, which is what I tend to do without a clear plan.
And, since I am crawling out of a funk and setting myself up a new plan to get productive again, I will grace your eyeballs with a plan on how to make a plan.
First, don't panic about narrowing down your choices. You can still get to all those other cool things, eventually. Just keep telling yourself that. I will do those cool things later. First I will do these other cool things.
Second, admit some of the cool things are impossible. You don't really spare money and access to professional camera equipment, so maybe you can't really do that awesome thing where you make a book/t.v. show hybrid. If the cool, out of your reach thing is something you really want, then you might try making a series of achievable steps to get there and put it on a back burner for when you're ready. Remember, there is always time for more cool things. The field is limitless. Focus on what you can achieve right now.
Third, now that you have narrowed your field of cool things, decide on what exactly your focus is. What do you want to achieve RIGHT NOW? Make this specific. Do you want to build a more community atmosphere, with readers actively engaged in your stories? Do you want to gain more readers of a certain age group? Do you want to bump your sales by so much?
Fourth, pick the cool thing that advances this goal the most. Maybe a cool interactive short stories series where readers get to vote on options would increase engagement. Maybe what you need is a bigger book you can charge more for to increase revenue. Maybe a book with pictures and videos would attract younger readers. The possibilities are as endless as my inability to spell possibilities. WHEEE!
Fifth (what do you mean there's more? Aren't you DONE YET?) make a timeline. Map out the steps you'll need and when you want them done by. Find something to hold you accountable to this timeline if you need to. Maybe give it to a friend who will bother you about missing marks.
And last but not least, HAVE FUN. That's what running through the field is all about, after all! Feel that warm, possibility filled sun on your skin and say, yes, yes I can learn to spell possibility!
