Creating and Maintaining Consistency
One of the most challenging aspects of authorhood is creating and maintaining a consistent schedule for all of the platforms you utilize. It is easy to create social accounts, buy a website domain, and post a few things. But if those platforms aren’t maintained and show recent contributions, people will think you aren’t active. That leads to disinterest. Your fans and potential readers moving on to other authors who do keep their accounts active.
If you are a calendar, planner, post-it note, or phone notification type, make sure you lean into it and use the same type of reminder as you build your schedule. If you have a difficult time remembering your tasks, make sure your workspace area has all the relevant information about your plan in an easy to see spot. If you are using digital means to keep track, those notifications need to be the first and last pop-up you see.
Create your plan with yourself in mind. It can be easy to fall into the organizational style of someone else if it looks and sounds good, but you won’t maintain it if it doesn’t mesh with your work style. You could have a million post-it notes outlining the next month of planning, but if you get easily overwhelmed by clutter, then that format isn’t for you.
Start small by listing what you want to accomplish first on each platform you use. Sending out newsletters every other month? Creating and sharing 3 posts a week? Updating your reviews on your website? Make a list with each step necessary to accomplish these goals. Then comes the hard part: actually executing your plans.
When you are working on consistency, the most important part is that you don’t stop. You are creating and maintaining a routine that is for your benefit, author. Until you can hand those tasks off onto someone else, they are your responsibility and directly affect your potential.
You will have some trial and error, author, until you find a strategy that works with and for you. Building and maintaining consistency is extremely difficult and will not happen overnight. Take this one step at a time and soon you will be running marathons.
