As a newly self-published novelist, I’m learning that the work on a new novel will continue to overlap with the marketing of the already-written one. Writers who have opted to publish the ‘traditional’ route often find that they must also market their own books these days, so there’s really no shortcut. One of my Kindle books, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book, has a great deal of good advice on this work. Still, it’s not easy to step away from the creation of a book to do marketing. One way to do this is to rigorously divide the time allocated to writing. For example, if four hours are set aside for writing, spend two of those actually writing and two of them marketing and doing paperwork.

That said, I’m in the midst of knocking the roughest corners off the first draft of the next novel. At this stage of the work, it’s a little easier to step away from the manuscript! The todo list for the novel is still quite long, though, so I’m picking it back up tomorrow morning.