Transcript

Hey, Indie Authors!

I’m Tora Moon and I’m your Indie Author Biz Guide. And today I have biz tip number three. Have a separate space for your writing and your business.

Now, this step has nothing to do with business principles and everything to do with your business mindset, which is just as important.

When we are solopreneur, or in our case an authorpreneur, quite often we work wherever we happen to be or make space in whatever space that we have. But I’ve learned from my past experience that this may be great for creativity, but not necessarily good for our business.

When we have a separate space such as a corner in our bedroom, or even better an office in our house with the door on it, or we’ve set up a space in our kitchen or on the kitchen counter, and it’s a space that we go to when we write. The more that we do that, the more we’re training our brain that when we sit at this place. Now’s time for writing. Now is my writing time. I’m ready to write.

And then we can short circuit that need of feeling like we need to be in the mood to write because whether we’re writing fiction or nonfiction, we don’t have to be in the mood to write. Well, most of us don’t. It’s time to question that premise as Becca Syme says. Do we really need to be in the mood to write? Or can we train our brains that when we sit down at our laptop or our computer in this space that it’s time to write, and that we write. And we can do that. Most of us can.

And for some authors you need two separate places: one to create and one for your business work. Because there are two different hats. Our creative hat in writing our books and our stories is completely different than our marketing hat, our business hat. Those things we do to run our author business or our other business, if we’re nonfiction authors and it may help to have two separate places.

I know some authors, that’s what they do. They have one place that they go for their creative writing and one place that they go to do their business writing or take care of business. And that’s just part of your business mindset and training your brain.

So, the action step four of this tip is if you haven’t already, look around your house, your space and determine where you’re going to set up your writing space, your creative space.

What feels good when you sit there and write? You may want to keep a list, you know, keep a tracker of where am I that I’m doing my most creative, most productive writing? And then choose that consciously as the place you go to, to write. And the same thing for your business. Where do you go to do your business and can it be the same space as your creative writing, or does it need to be a different space? And this you’re going to have to experiment with.

If you want to know more about how to treat your writing as a business, you can get my book, Business and Accounting for Authors, and I do talk about separating your space in there and it’s available on my website in e-book, print, or audiobook formats. And if you must, it’s available on all the retail sites, or you can ask your library to get it for you.

If you need help in developing your author business, an Author Business Development VIP Day may be what you need. You can find more information about that on my website.