After the fire of of 2013, which wiped me out mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally, I had taken a break from my literary career to get my kids’ and my life together.

We were homeless so I had reasons to actually try to concentrate on things. I didn’t come out with a book for a whole year, but I wasn’t feeling bad. In 2011, I had released seven books that year, so I made up for it in advance.

Still, it hurt my literary career and I lost a lot of money and following because of that.

So now I need to re-introduce myself to many, consistently show up and then introduce myself to my new readers

Even when i jumped back in the literary game, I wasn’t building a following I was working on saving my literary organization and building up more influence there. Offline Speaking events, writing articles, doing workshops, getting engagement and really pushing my Facebook group to be more talkative.

I wrote very little and in the past seven years I’ve only released ten books. That’s very low for me when in the past I’ve done at least four to six minimum.

Now that the kids are out the house, the marriage is calming down, I’m finding I have free time to write and I want to get back to it. I need to get back to it. I have a lot of stories in my head that need to get out and no day is promised.

Literally.

This year has been tough emotionally. From not just Covid, but from losing my mom and BFF, dealing with other friends passing away and leaving, but the disconnect I have with reality when I cannot be around it because of Covid (i.e.: social gatherings, distancing and not enjoying the outside). It’s made me stronger spiritually and then I started thinking a lot about the fans I do have and really needing to show them appreciation.

With blessings, I was still able to go to my job everyday – at home – and keep our way of life going with my husband. (He’s working from home too so we see A LOT of each other.)

I remade a plan midyear to get myself situated to make a decent income from my writing again.  I’m calling these my 4th quarter challenges because there’s no way i’m going to get all this done in a month or two. A video will follow soon too in my FB Group to discuss these on the 25th of September.

1.Make a list of books I’m going to write. Don’t worry about a deadline. Just work on writing them. 

a. He touched me (still working on that I swear, got caught up in back research and keeping true to the character. Stopped her from making dumb decisions just to move the story forward.

b. Let Me Love You which will be re-titled The Husband’s Boss… Her Lover.

c. Stealing Innocence IV: Lethal Heart

d. Stranger in My House

f. Betrayed – finishing that

2.Work on my writing. Techniques, Outlining and Series Bibles for past books

a. I’ve been following a lot of YouTubers but I needed to first make a series bibles and I loved Olivia Gaines technique. She had a great video on this. Brittany Wang also do a great job too so I’m combining both of their methods and putting those together for the Hearts and Blacks for now.

b. I’m a pantser, but I thought about serious outlining. When i wasn’t writing, I was frustrated because I couldn’t but I wanted to keep the ideas as fresh as possible for that story and I needed to learn to outline fast. Of course I turned to YouTube again and found the three part arc, nine story block method. Lots of Tubbers do it and I can’t remember how i found a method I could be comfortable with.

c. I wanted to give my readers a little different writing, but with a lot of the same way i plot and story make up. I’m not trying to become the sappy hit it and quit it kinda writer, but I do want to bang it and blow it out the water. So I’m taking on The Writing Productivity Challenge by Melissa Storm. Wish me lots of blessings because already the first day is killing me, even though it’s the initial challenge is super simple. But It’s that teenager in me saying I don’t wanna.

3. More content and marketing is my third thing. This has been on a front I don’t understand. By the grace of God, he put systems inside of me that no matter what I’m going to market and promote, but now I need a system and get into how to do it better to generate sales.

a. Build more video and audio content – I’ve been trying to make sure I do one video a week and on my podcast I’ve been trying to push out two chapters a week.

b. Write more articles and blog more. See I’m doing it now, but I knew it would require that I do it a lot more than what I’ve been doing, yet I didn’t want to overwhelm myself, so I’m getting back to my once a week schedule on each blog. That means I do have to do a blog post at least once a day and I need to get ahead of the game.

c. Get more on other platforms. I pressed my old VA to start helping me again and she’s on board. Yes! I’ll update you on her helping me.

d. Getting help for Motown Writers. Author, Denise Bryson has come to my assistance in being a secondary moderator for Motown Writers FB group and oh boy, it’s been wonderful. (PS she just released a new book so please check it out.)

e. Build premium (paid) content on my website – my live story will hopefully take care of that and post more exclusive stories in my gumroad store 

f. Revamp my current website. It hasn’t been changed in years, so I need to get this up and out the way slowly.

g. Build a list to post my blog, podcast and video on. I have to post it somewhere and I usually just rely on this blog to post out, but I know I have to be diligent and post out to more places.

I even made a content calendar to keep me on track and even if I fall off the wagon I can just chuck that day and get back on the next day. Yes, it looks a little overwhelming but once I can just start, I think I can keep it going.

Pray for me. 

I know there are authors out there reading and I’d love to know your take on it. Readers, you’ve followed a lot of authors out there who’ve discussed their goals. What do you think? 

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