I’m a self-reliant writer for the most part. I’m also a homesteader and close to being a hermit (hermitress) these days. It would take a lot more money than I make at it to delegate any of the tasks, homesteaderly or otherwise, and more time than I want to spend waiting on traditional publishing so others can do some of the writerly-related tasks for me.
How a Writer’s To-Do list Ties in with Self-Reliance on the Homestead
Seeing as how this blog is focused on nature, homesteading and becoming self-reliant, it would at first seem that the following list has strayed way off topic.
But that’s not true.
Self-Reliance means more than homesteading the land. It also, in our case, means becoming self-reliant in our finances. Right now, Rob is working outside of the homestead, and while he’s doing that I’m working toward bringing our finances to a self-reliant state by building the foundation to our business.
What Do Writers Do?
Well, we write, of course. And while we’re doing that we can’t really do anything else. But as a mostly self-published writer, there’s also the fact that I have to be self-reliant for all of my own marketing and promotion, website design, cover design, formatting and the actual publishing, ordering of copies and selling of the books.
Keeping an entertaining, interesting, and informative website is my goal not only because I enjoy doing it simply for the sake of sharing, but also because it’s a lifeline for finding new readers.
To ensure a lot of readers continue to come here from search engines, I have to keep the site functioning properly. It needs work to stay in Google’s good graces especially, because that’s where the lion’s share of my visitors originate (even if those visitors rarely leave me nice comments, or any comments at all…*hint**hint*).
Virtual Clutter
Just as I tend to collect real things like rocks and plants and books and papers and notes and… (the list goes on and on), I also tend to do the same with my virtual space. The result is that the website becomes cluttered and convoluted and pretty soon even I have to search for things I need when I need them.
So part of my to-do list involved a bit of cleanup on the website. Part of it is ordinary homestead stuff.
Having just published two new books means there is behind-the-scenes work to do for that. And just having been scheduled for two speaking engagements means I have some follow-up to do for that, which I can’t do until some of the list items are marked “done”.
A typical homesteading writer’s list?
The list is typical a lot of *my* weeks. I’m not sure how much of this is stuff other writers do, or how many other homesteaders are also writers. So there’s no telling how typical the list is. I’d like your thoughts on that, actually. Being a hermit out here makes it hard to know what others are doing and my blog cruising time has dropped off to almost nil these days.
You’ll notice I didn’t list housework… well, a certain amount of it is just a given. I’ll do what has to be done, but it’s usually at the bottom of the list and incidental. Guests beware. The state of my house is reflected in the list below, ha.
FINALLY. The list.
I’ll just post it the way I have it scribbled on my notes:
- make coupon for 100% off PDF
- Update Kindle versions to mention paperback
- Update paperback version to mention Kindle versions
- Add SmartURL’s for book at Amazon
- redirect duplicate book pages
- find out how to get podcasts to show up on podcast reader apps
- assign canonical URL’s for duplicate posts I want to keep
- update the July household ledger
- begin working on the 2015 business ledgers
- brush the horses and pick hooves
- make blog post
- make media package for speaking engagements so i can find all the info easier next time
- send the above to the two places i have scheduled speaking to do
- update the book page
- find out if I can recycle ISBN no longer in use
- vacuum seal the rest of the sugar
- repair fence at creek crossing
- finish weeding garden
- get back to work on Bounty Hunter (my fiction novel in progress)
And there you have it. A typical day in the life of a homesteading hermit writer.
