Bug Books: Joey Paul Online: Juggling Content & Writing

Monday 3 May 2021

Juggling Content & Writing - The Creative Process

JUGGLING CONTENT & WRITING

A lot of people will tell you that I'm very organised, and I can't argue with that. I have now been using a planner for over a year, and even before that I had my Sticky Notes system that guided me through the months and allowed me to get things done. I write my chapters, I also do my admin stuff, like writing these blog posts, as well as vlog scripts and recording said videos. It took me a hell of a long time to get to this point, but one thing I've not talked about before was how I advise others to manage to do the same.

Thinking about it, I know that I'm a bit of an oddball when it comes to how I do my Authortube videos. A lot of people batch film, and I just don't have the energy to do that so will record everything a month in advance. Like right now it's the end of April and I will have all of May's videos done before I sit down to then do a month's worth of blog posts as well. It's something that's worked for me for a while, and it took a lot of trial and error to get to that point.

Juggling the content when it comes to an Authortube channel, or all of social media, or even a website and a blog, on top of trying to get your writing done takes a lot of time and energy. So how do I do it? And what do you do if you're not really a planner when it comes to time?

STEP #1: LIST EVERYTHING
I started off with planning by being pretty loose with the idea of what would get done and when. I just had a long to-do list every week, and then every fortnight, and finally ending up as every month, of things that I had no choice but to do. Like blog posts, or chapters to write, revisions to do, videos to record. You name it, it went on the list. When I moved to Sticky Notes, I would assign one thing to every day and give myself some catch up days in between, and I usually always used them.

I wasn't writing daily, and I wasn't writing to the speed and volume that I do now, but I was managing to keep the blog updated and do my videos, even though I didn't have any kind of consistency to my schedule in those days. Once I had the list and I'd tweaked it all, I moved onto the next step.

STEP #2: ASSIGN IMPORTANCE
It didn't take me long to work out that if I didn't prioritise my writing, then it just wasn't going to happen. I had to work out what I really wanted to get done and then move on from there. If I wanted to make sure that there was a blog post every Monday then I had to set time aside to actually write it, and for a while I would do them on the Monday they were due and that cut into writing time, which annoyed me until I found a solution.

Once you have everything in order of importance, then you can move onto the next step. But be brutally honest with yourself. Don't attach more importance to something that you personally don't feel. If it's something like writing and you would rather be doing something else, then do that. Make sure you do some soul searching and find out what you actually want to be doing with your time.

STEP #3: BREAK THINGS INTO CHUNKS
It can feel impossible to achieve something when you're looking at the end goal. Like writing a book is a great end goal, but when that's the only purpose, you can feel a little overwhelmed about it all. This is why this step is so important. You break down your things you wanna get done into manageable pieces and assign them as you go. This can be with a planner, with Sticky Notes, on a calendar, or anything that works for you. Hell it can even just be a list that you add to as time goes on. Whatever works for you, is the best thing.

This is something I've been doing for years, and I did a video last week about setting up my new planner (video here) and I talked there about how I have my monthly goals, but I'll then take those and break them into smaller chunks for the weekly ones. That way I know I'm on track and I'm not having to overthink things and worry. It's all gonna be sorted by the end.

So there we go, that's how I juggling making content, like these blog posts, and also keeping my writing going. If you have any tips, feel free to leave them in the comments below!