Photo from Stock Xchng

One of the things that really drives me nuts as an author is having so much to do, writing, blogging, editing, and promoting that I get overwhelmed and just want to throw up my hands. I actually love doing all of the above, but figuring out when to do each of these things can be difficult. Even when I work hard to find the time, I often have problems staying on top of all my author duties. So, what does an author do when they have too much author stuff to do and not enough time?

Most of the time we actually have the time, it's just that we don't utilize the time we have in an effective manner. Here are five tips for utilizing your time so you can stay on top of your author duties.

1. Make a list of all your author tasks, both writing and non-writing such as promotion although that can also involve writing such as my article here.

2. Make a list of everything you do each day. This will help you to figure out where you have true free time. Spend an hour each day surfing the internet? Maybe you could spend a half hour and write 1000 words instead. You get the idea.

3. Figure out how much time an author task will take. For longer tasks break these into steps so you can fit steps into smaller free time slots, and break up your tasks so they still get completed but you're not trying to do too much in a smaller time slot.

4. Once you've made your list of what you do each day and you've figured out where you can carve free time out, then look at your list of author tasks again. Test it out, choose a few tasks for the week and then plug them into your free time slots on a calendar. In other words make a schedule. How you do this is up to you, but there are tons of free online scheduling and calendar options.

5. Make sure that you don't schedule too much author task to fit the free time slot you've allotted to it. Don't be afraid to break down tasks into steps that way you can schedule two steps or three steps into a smaller allotted time slot for example and then the final steps in another free time slot.

6. Finally, don't throw out your fun to do tasks. You should always schedule fun activities into your schedule as well. If all you're doing is working then this makes authors very dull indeed. Make time to play too!

I hope these time management tips help you as much as they've helped me. I find I write more and I do more promotion when I go about it this way, rather than hit or miss.

Winter Wonderland from RGB stock

NaNo for those who don't know is National Novel Writing Month and November is the month where many authors including myself try to finish a novel in you guessed it, a month. I've gotten close, but I've never quite finished a novel in a month using NaNo. I love the idea of it, but staying on task when you have a day job with a lot of overtime during the holiday season makes it tough. I work in a busy hospital OR during the day and October through February tends to be our busiest time of year since most people have satisfied their deductible by this time and are trying to get any necessary surgeries out of the way before they have to start from ground zero deductible wise.

A few things that I've found to be helpful in staying on task with NaNo are the following:

1. Get up a little earlier in the morning and write 1000+ words. Or I write when I have breaks. I don't try and have great swaths of writing time. For one thing it's not realistic and for another I hate it when I have hours and hours to write and then I can't write. I do better with short bursts of writing.

2. Play some kind music softly in the background, preferably without words. Listening to music with words I understand just takes my attention away from my writing so I tend to either listen to music without words, or if it does have words, words I don't understand. That way my attention doesn't easily become focused elsewhere.

3. Just write. I don't go back and read or edit anything I've written previously. This is hard especially if you can't remember precisely where you left off. In that case, I might read a few of the previous paragraphs just to get me started, but no more.

4. I make sure I get plenty of rest. One of the things that will easily kill my ability to write effectively is not getting enough rest. I can do it once, but if it becomes consistent I make a lot more mistakes and man do my stories take weird turns when I'm sleep deprived. When I'm tired they go places I never would have taken them!

So, there you have it. What I do to stay on task during NaNo.

Photo from Stock Xchng. Just got zinged for using a photo on his blog without permission!

If you're like me and you blog, and if you're like me and you put photos on your blog then you're already aware of copyright issues. Most people know that if you use photos in your blog you have to be very careful, you cannot just grab any photo off the internet and use it in a blog post. I get most of my photos from Stock Xchng, RGB Stock, and MorgueFile. All are excellent resources for stock photos and all I have to do is give a credit and they're free.

How this subject came to my attention again was that I noticed on another blog that the author had stopped doing a Man Candy day due to concerns about copyright. Meaning they didn't want to run afowl of photographers who had taken the photos. This is one reason I decided not to post these types of photos directly to my blog initially, and decided to have a Pinterest board instead. Imagine my surprise when doing research to see that photographers can still sue Pinterest which actually ends up being you since their contract states clearly that you agree that any situations where a photographer or company claims copyright and that they're going to sue, you are responsible for all costs. That's right, Pinterest is not responsible, you are! Needless to say, I had missed that little tidbit when reading through the contract initially. I admit I skimmed it, like I do most online contracts. However, when I saw this, I knew I had to take down at least one of my boards. I certainly can't afford it if someone decides to sue me over a photo on my blog, so that being the case I deleted my Male Eye Candy Pinterest board. However, the eye candy has not gone away! LOL I created a new board Man Candy and it only has photos I can legally use. The way I found these types of photos was by going to Flickr, and doing an advanced search that had creative common's licenses, and had photos that could be altered and changed, and could be used commercially. I figured that way I was covered. And Pinterest links back to the photographer on Flickr so it works well for everyone. I also may decide to start tweeting and or FB'ing links to man candy. But we'll see. This was an idea mentioned to me by another author as a way to get around this. So, if you want to take a look, here's the link to my new Man Candy Pinterest Board!

I guess the moral of this story is be very sure that you can use that photo legally, otherwise you can wind up with a heap of trouble and lots of legal bills. If you want to know more about this and who the author was who ran into trouble because of a photo on her blog, you can read it here.

Want some legitimate places to find photos for your blog? Here's a list that I use, and yes, you still have to give credit as to where you got the photo, the only one you don't I believe is MorgueFile.

1. Stock Xchng
2. MorgueFile
3. RGB Stock
4. Free Digital Photos
5. Free Range Stock
6. Pixel Perfect Digital
7. Free Media Goo
8. Open Photo Net
9. Flickr Be very sure with Flickr that you go to Advanced Search and select Creative Common's License, Find Content to Use Commercially, Find Content to Modify, Adapt or Build Upon to be sure you can legally use the photo.
10: Flickr: Wanas This is a group of writers with blogs who decided to provide photos they had taken and make them available to other bloggers, all you have to do is give a credit to the photographer and you can use them without reprisal for free!

Another great resource for photos for your blog are photos in the Public Domain. This means you do not have to credit anyone and you can use the photos for just about anything at all.

Here are some resources for Public Domain Photos:

1. Wikipedia: Public Domain Images Resources 
2. Public Domain Pictures
3. Image After
4. Public Domain Photos
5. Public Domain Images
6. Pixabay This site has many wonderful free photos, vectors and drawings submitted by fantastic photographers and artists. While you don't need to give a credit, this site reminds us that photos of people or properties you need to get permission from the person or owner before using for commercial purposes. (You're okay for using on your blog though)
7. PD Photo

I'm always amazed at how so many people think you need to buy stock photos when there are all these resources that you can use at your fingertips.

Enjoy!

Okay, we've all had them, the bad review. Hell, I've given a few in my lifetime. I don't like to give them I certainly know what it feels like on the receiving end and it sucks. But I've learned a few ways to deal with getting bad reviews and here they are:

1. Don't get respond with any other words other than, "thank you."

2. Realize that reviews are just opinions and that not everyone is going to like your book.

3. If the bad review is on Amazon or B&N or another distributor and it's the only review you have, find a few reviewers that liked your book and ask them to post it on these distributor sites so it balances your rating out.

5. Have a glass of wine, or a piece of chocolate and forget about it. After all it's just one measly review, in the long run it doesn't mean much.

And that's my advice this Monday for when you get a bad review. Have a great week! :-)