You know how it is. You have a long list of things you could be doing. As writer, publisher, and entrepreneur, that list is long. There’s always something, and writing new words is right on top.

What’s after writing?

• Writing a blurb.
• Looking at hot guys stock photos
• Reading a non-fiction book
• Listening to a podcast
• Beta reading
• Reading  a book in your genre
• Creating an ad (after you’ve read the book about it, of course)
• Blogging, reading and commenting on other people’s blogs

But sometimes you turn on your laptop, a cat crawls into your lap, and boom. You’re tired, and you’d rather watch the next episode of Outlander than see if your blurb is converting (if you don’t know what that means, you need to read Mastering Amazon Descriptions: An Author’s Guide: Copywriting for Authors by Brian D. Meeks. Another thing you can add to your list! Yay!)  I’m sure Diana Gabaldon thanks you. But I probably should point out that without her writing the words, there would be no show. Maybe Outlander was a bad example.

I’m in that predicament tonight. The things that I could be doing right now? Working on the new cover for All of Nothing. Working on the blurb. Writing more words for the third book in my Wedding Party series.

Instead I’m sitting with a fan blowing on me. I’m a little nauseated from sipping too much Prosecco on an empty stomach. I was grinding my teeth in my sleep last night so I have a toothache on the left side of my jaw, top and bottom, that feels a little more than mild, and all in all, I’m just tired.

And feeling like this is always a conundrum. Do you give in, or push through? Give in and practice a little #selfcare, or do you, in fact, get some shit done?

I suppose it depends on where you are in your schedule. Don’t have one? Well, nothing gets done simply by dreaming, and if you give yourself a pass too many times, you’ll end up with a handful of days where nothing got accomplished. A schedule isn’t a bad thing. It can keep you on track. A schedule or a plan can at least be a guide in that if you do start letting too many days go by, you can tap yourself on the back and ask yourself what the heck is going on.

Taking a break to breathe is advisable, but if you want books to publish, you have to write them, too.

I could put on some coffee and at least get one or two small things done. Work on my blurb. Look over what I have for my cover. I’d like to swap them out so the book is ready to go when I put all my books back into KU next month. The cover is going well, and I’ll update you on that probably Thursday. I’ll be swapping out the cover for IngramSpark, too, so that will be lovely, though I’m getting used to the IS user interface and dealing with the cover template isn’t so hard anymore.

I had a soft deadline of getting book three done by the end of the month. I’ll be close, but maybe not finished. But that’s okay. Without the deadline I probably wouldn’t have made as much progress as I did. I’m proud the book is almost done. It’s a good book with a strong plot and relateable characters. It seems crazy to say that I’ll have finished three books this year.

But I guess that’s the point of this blog post. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that had I given myself too much downtime.

For tonight I’ll try to calm my stomach down, make some coffee, and see if I can check one thing off the list before going to bed.

I’m going to a writer’s meeting tomorrow, so that should be interesting. I’m not a joiner, and while I know the value of networking, I can’t lie. More than a little bit of me wants to skip it.

When you decided to be a writer, did you know how many people would be involved?

I didn’t either.

I feel like I should offer you something since you made it this far and have given me 15 minutes of your time or so, so I’ll end my blog post with this.

I recently read Make Money on Medium: Build Your Audience and Grow Your Income with Medium.com. I’m always open to new things, but after reading the book I realized I don’t want to write for Medium–I like blogging for the audience I already have. But whether you’re a blogger or a Medium writer, Nicole gives some good tips for what to write, how to write, and headlines. I’ll share one little tip that she tells her readers about, and that is a blog title, or headline evaluator.

Headlines or titles are important in that you don’t want your readers guessing what your content is about. You could have a GREAT blog post, but no one will read it if you title it something weird. (That goes for book titles too, but that would be a different blog post.)

There are a few headline generators, and you can Google them.

Coschedule.com will analyze your title (if you give them a few pieces of info about yourself and your business) and tell you if it’s too weak. It didn’t like the title I came up with for this blog post:

Nicole suggests that you want your book to be at 80 or better. She even admits that she might spend more time thinking up a good headline or title than actually writing the post. That seems crazy, but on the other hand, no one is going to read what’s inside if the title isn’t appropriate, so she isn’t that far off the mark. Being she’s a HUGELY popular writer on Medium, I would take her word for it.

You can plug in titles forever, but just to see what I could do, I changed my title:

That’s actually a vast improvement, but a lie. That’s not what this post is about. Mainly it’s about not feeling guilty if you don’t feel like doing anything, but also keeping those feelings under control so your to-do list doesn’t look like Mount Kilimanjaro by the end of the week/month/year. Everyone knows how fast time goes.

Anyway, if you’re interested in writing for Medium.com I suggest you take a look at Nicole’s book. She offers you some great tips on how to get started, how to follow and pick up followers, and how to write for a pub. If you’re on the fence about blogging, but feel you should be giving out content in some way to get your name out there, writing for Medium could be a good way to do that.

What am I going to do now? I still haven’t shaken off my blahs, but I did take some Aleve for my mouth and made a cup of coffee.  I could work on my blurb or watch another episode of Outlander.

I’ll let you guess which one.

Have a great week!