Embracing the Fiction Author Journey

61. Finding focus as an author: Navigating the writing journey in 2024

• Erin P.T. Canning

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Are you struggling to figure out where to focus next in your writing journey? 

From navigating various publishing paths to juggling writing workshops, marketing courses, and more, the confusion is real.

In this episode, host Erin P.T. Canning reflects on the challenges she faced in previous years with balancing parenthood, editing, and writing. Despite releasing her first fantasy romance novel in 2023, she felt overwhelmed trying to balance her priorities.

Find out how Erin found focus for 2024 and how that focus will help her to combat overwhelm as she grows her author business and navigates the indie author publishing industry. 

You’ll also discover how Erin’s goals for 2024 will directly benefit the Parents Who Write community and its listeners. 

Topics discussed in this episode: 

  • Looking backward, not forward
  • Choosing my big 2024 goal
  • Two main ways to achieve my goal
  • Goal one: Publishing more books
  • Goal two: Learning about the indie author industry
  • Sharing my findings and journey with my listeners
  • Your challenge


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Erin P.T. Canning:

As a writer, does figuring out what you should focus on next overwhelm you? You hear people talking about different publishing paths and book talk and writing workshops and marketing courses and book coaches and different types of editors. How do you choose what to learn about first? And if you do pick one of those, how do you know if that choice will pay off? I think a lot of writers and even established authors can relate to this confusion, because there's so much for us to keep learning as we progress in our writing journey. And that learning curve can feel endless. For me personally, I feel like I've been in a perpetual state of overwhelm for the last eight years, from becoming a new parent to reclaiming my identity as a writer. Last year, I finally achieved my dream of becoming an author when I released my first fantasy romance novel, Ruins and Redemption, in September 2023. Thank you, everyone, for supporting that. But releasing a book isn't what I'm here to talk about today. I'm here because only last month did I find a way to organize all those learning opportunities and to do list items so that I can make 2024 as successful as possible and not fall into overwhelm yet again. And I want to share my story, my discovery about how I found that direction and what steps I'm taking to stay on target, and what I'm doing that's working really well now. So I'm excited to share this next part of my journey with you and how this new focus will benefit you as my listener too. If you want extra support so I can personally help you identify your goals and what steps will help you get there fastest, at the end of this episode, I'll let you know what to do next. But for now, let's get to the show. You're listening to Parents Who Write, the podcast that helps you pursue your writing dreams. I'm your host, Erin P. T. Canning. I'm an author, editor, writing coach, and mom of two young boys. And my mission is to help you prioritize your writing, strengthen your voice, and gain confidence and direction so that you can own your identity as a writer and thrive as an author. Hey, friend. Welcome to another episode of Parents Who Write. Today I am going to be talking about my big goal for 2024. I took some time to reflect and look back on previous years. And I don't know if you're like me, but I tend to always look forward and be like, what's the next thing that I need to work on? What's the next achievement I need to reach? What's the next milestone or just concrete thing that I, I need to do. And if we are only ever looking forward, those goalposts are constantly moving forward with us, right? So if we're only ever looking forward, all we see is the stuff we have yet to do. So before choosing my big 2024 goal, I took some time to look back, and this is what I realized. 2022 was my year for relearning who I am beyond being mom. My youngest started part time preschool. He was in school for three hours a day. And I used that opportunity to lean into this community and to get back to my roots as an editor. That was an extremely challenging time because I didn't realize it, but I had started to shed my identity as an at home parent, but my child was still home most of the time. So I was overworking myself tremendously. And on one hand, it was great because I had all this drive and motivation. I was excited and I finally knew what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be and all that stuff. but I was cramming in 40 hours, 50 hours of work every week between my child being in preschool three hours every day and then like working from eight o'clock at night until two in the morning. It was not my healthiest year, but it was amazing in the fact that I felt closer to being myself. So, that was awesome. And then last year, 2023 was about building up my editing clientele and learning how to be an author myself and learning the ins and outs of self publishing. And another big milestone for me last year was that my littlest started kindergarten. So all of a sudden, in September, I had this additional time during the day where I wasn't racing between picking him up and dropping him off and doing things with him and playdates and etc. Like, now I had a somewhat normal 30 hour work week available to me. Uh, but that only started in September. And so, part of my looking back on the previous year is I make a list of what I accomplished. And part of it was, yes, my kiddo starting kindergarten. But when I made a tally of the other stuff that I did in terms of being an editor and an author and a podcaster, I released 31 podcast episodes. I edited 10 novels for clients. I wrote 240 thousand words between book one and two of my own series. I released my first book. Hot dog. I can call myself an author. And I, I just, I made my own author dream finally come true this year. So, it still wasn't my healthiest year, given that the majority of that, my kiddo was still in preschool and I was working these crazy hours. So, taking all of that into consideration with, with 2024, my big focus is to grow my author business because that is who I have wanted to be since I can remember, since I was playing with Barbie and I was coming up with stories on the playground with my friends about aliens attacking us and, um, it's hysterical because looking back at it, I also realize how much all of those stories were like romance and fantasy in nature. So, this year is all about growing my author business. What does that mean for parents who write? Well, there's two ways that I'm going about this with growing my author business. Okay, the first one is, uh, put more books out there. So that's gonna be fun. I know what I'm doing. I'll share that in a minute. And my second way to make that happen is learning about the indie author publishing industry, trying to put myself out there, wrap my mind around all of the ins and outs that come with that. And when we are picking our main goal for the year, the steps that we take underneath that, the efforts that we're putting in throughout the year, we want to make sure that they all drive toward and align with that primary goal that is going to help us get there. Because I wear a lot of hats between editor, writer, podcaster, you know, and mom, right? In addition to others, not to diminish being a wife by any means. I love my husband profusely. But there's, there's a lot there. And so it helps to just have that one primary focus that I can then filter through and say, okay, if I'm thinking about doing XYZ, how does that help me with my one primary goal for the year? So again, my big goal for the year is to grow my author business. So looking at part one of that, where I said, was getting more books out there. I'm aiming to release four books this year. Woot woot! This is following All Write Well, Maria Secoy's four books a year method. I have my schedule set up. I'm releasing book two of my series this February. And then my goal is to release something three months after that for each one. And I, I've got this figured out. I'm already starting book three. I'll, I'll get more into how all of this works, but, yeah, I, I put together my schedules because getting more books out there is obviously one of the most important aspects to grow my business and my career as an author this year. I've got my outline set up. I've got my dates, I've got my deadlines. I'm just super excited to be leaning into what it is that I am the most passionate about. So, how this is going to help in terms of with Parents Who Write and with you guys, I'm going to be sharing my progress with you throughout the year, showing where I'm at, what I'm working on, how I'm getting over the hurdles that I am facing. So you can get a glimpse into what this is like. And, you know, hopefully that will inspire you to continue pursuing your own author dreams. How am I making this work as a parent who writes getting four books out per year? It can be done. In fact, I know that it can be done now. So I'm staggering a bunch of things. Basically, the biggest difference with when I was working toward my master's was there was a lot of emphasis about focusing on one project from start to finish. And what I'm learning is how to, or what I have learned, is how to, stagger what it is that I'm, what I'm working on. So, what does that mean for right now? While my book two is with my proofreader, I am already outlining book three, and I'm already in discussion, well, I'm going back and forth with my cover designer. We're so close to nailing down the cover for book two. I can't wait to see it. But yeah, I'm already working on book three. I backed myself into a corner with book two. I took off two months to just kind of be sick and relax. Uh, but I had a deadline for book two, and I kept thinking like, Oh, I've got time. I've got time. It's going to be fine. Yeah, no, no. I, I then all of a sudden, like it came November. And I was like, Oh, I, I need to get my book to my proofreader at the beginning of January, that gives me two months to revise 120, 000 words. Oh no. It's so. November and December, I feel like I didn't breathe. I feel like I didn't come up from the computer keyboard, and Christmas was a blur this year, which is sad to think about. I mean, we had a great Christmas. I took Christmas day off, spent it with the family like I was present with them. My prime rib came out amazing. Anybody wants a great prime rib recipe, reach out to me. I'm happy to share it. It was easy and phenomenal. But it was too much. So, with book three, I'm being much more mindful in terms of when it's due to my proofreader, when I'm getting copies to my beta readers. I'm basically working backwards with my goal this time. Uh, and how many words I need to edit per week so that I don't burn myself out at the end. That's what's going on with me in, in the writing, author side of things. The second part of that, my, my two primary methods for growing my author business is, as I said, learning the ins and outs of the indie publishing industry. And I'm not going to lie. This is daunting to me. I don't have a background in business. I don't have a background in marketing. And so the idea of navigating all of those pieces and trying to stay up to date with news and who's at the top of the industry and just what's going on is overwhelming to me. My ADHD brain tends to freak out at the thought of trying to keep an eye on so many moving pieces. So I had to find a way to make this goal measurable and achievable. Well, first let me say, it's very important that we have smart, achievable, and measurable goals. I talked about this in last week's episode, about how to set realistic writing goals for the new year. I really hope you take a look at that episode because it talks a lot about this stuff in more detail. But, when I looked at how to make learning the Indie author publishing industry, manageable for me, I decided that, okay, I identified the sources that I needed to check with, like Facebook groups and who are the major players and how to follow them on social media, and made a list of, uh, podcast episodes that I also want to follow and, books that I want to read, etc. So there's tons of resources out there, right? But again, my ADHD brain can get very overwhelmed thinking about all of that. So instead, I broke it down into measurable chunks where my goal is every month to be reading at least one if not two professional development books. So maybe that's being more effective with my newsletter. Maybe that's, uh, brain stopped working. What are the things I need to know? I know there's, there's tons, there's tons of stuff, right? This is why I make a list of it, because otherwise my brain just gets overwhelmed and boggled down. So, my goal is to read at least one to two books per month, listen to a podcast episode from a different podcaster, hopefully once a week. I'm going to start off with, every other week just so I can see what's measurable and doable because I don't want to set myself up for failure. I want to set myself up for success, and I have a tendency to be an overachiever, so I'm trying to back off just a little bit. Oh, and then the other thing I'm looking for once a month is a free opportunity for me to participate in. So whether that's a workshop that's available, whether that's an email campaign that people have going out, whatever that's, that's offering free tips that's going to help me. So with these goals in mind, that means that during my podcast episodes, I am going to be able to talk about this stuff with you guys. And share what it is that I have learned from that. And so I'm, again, just trying to share with you my author journey. Both on the writing side of things and just navigating, honestly, navigating every aspect of the author journey because it's multifaceted and it changes so much, you know? Back in the day, Facebook was the thing for your organic marketing and then it became TikTok. I can't do TikTok. I'm sorry. Everybody else there who does TikTok and you make that work, you are awesome. Trying to keep up with the algorithm, it triggered my anxiety. So I have never been a TikToker. I mean, I tried like, I think for like a month and no, too much anxiety. Um, plus I want to spend my time writing, not creating TikTok videos. So, that's the reason why I'm not on TikTok. Again, everybody else who's doing it, you keep rocking at that. Right now everything is trending toward Instagram's new threads, uh, app. So, you know, I'm giving that a go. That's low stress for me to post something in there, try to reach people that way. But I'll see how that goes. I'll, let you guys know. At the end of the day, I really hope that me sharing all of these bits and pieces are going to inspire you to continue with your author journey. So, if you haven't done so yet, I challenge you to identify your top priority for 2024. Because once you know what your North Star is, you can take that list of to dos and learning opportunities and ask yourself, will this thing help me achieve my 2024 goal? If yes, great. Add that to your list and put them in order of which one will help you the most. If your answer is no, then don't let that to-do item distract you. File it away for another time when you're ready to change your North Star, because I don't want you to get stuck in perpetual learning. Don't get me wrong, I love learning. We should always be learning something. But not everything. And not all at once. Because in order for us to make forward progress, we have to take action. We have to do the thing we want to achieve. That's it for now, friend. Happy writing.

Erin:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Parents Who Write. Ready to stop circling around your manuscript? As an experienced professional editor, I can help you finish your book with confidence and direction. Learn more by visiting parentswhewrite. com slash editing and book a free 30 minute call with me to discuss what's right for you.

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Erin P.T. Canning

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