I led a session at the Cat Writer’s retreat about finding time to finish your projects.  One concern several folks expressed: the challenge of starting one task, only to feel guilty for not doing another.  (Example — getting to a point where the story is flowing, only to have the block of time allotted for writing end — and have time allotted for marketing or editing or whatever begin.

This type of gear switching works well for some writers, but if it doesn’t work for you, try to fit more flexibility into your schedule.  One option is to count your block of writing time (or anticipated word count) as a minimum amount of work to get done.  If you’re enjoying yourself, by all means keep going! Hold onto the enthusiasm you have for the project, and re-schedule the marketing or editing block.  Making the new project a priority means you will have something new to market your backlist, or something new to query.  (If you’re writing for self-improvement or just to make art, you likely don’t have to worry about this anyway.)

If you are doing marketing, it can help to set aside a day and pre-schedule all (or some, if you post what’s happening on the spur of the moment) of your social media and blog posts.  That way, they just appear at regular intervals, without you having to switch gears every time you need to post.  You can either do this using the features on the various social media platforms, or choose a third party scheduling software to keep things organized.  I prefer the method of working out captions for my pics in a spreadsheet, so that scheduling the posts is a matter of copy and paste.