DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!

One of the things about being a writer that they don't tell you in all those books about writing is that a good deal of it is about time management. I suffer from a severe lack of this skill at times, and as my regular readers have probably guessed by now, the first thing to get dropped off my list when I need more time for a project is my blog posting.

As a result, I tend to not post very much from mid-November to early January. It's an unavoidable part of my life, and even though I hate it, it happens whether I like it or not.

It starts off when things really get hopping with NaNoWriMo. Regardless of my other obligations, I look forward to NaNo every year to give me a chance to get motivated on the first draft of a future novel. Both Dimensional Games and Interdimensionally Yours have their roots in a November blitz of caffeine and deadline. It's the one time of year I feel perfectly justified in closing the door on the kids and wife because I need to meet a daily word count.

Unfortunately, I tend to over-compensate for this by being "SuperRobDadMan" for the month of December. Paying special attention to the joys of family and friends for an entire month. I also use December as a time to reflect on the business of being "THE Rob Cerio", doing my best to nail down my appearence calendar, revise short stories, identify new markets, new projects, and new opportunities to move my career forward.

This is not an exceedingly healthy way to lead the writing life. Hang on, let me get a soapbox to stand on and pontificate from...

Better. Life my friends... is all about balance. Particularly when you want to get into the crazy, always changing field of writing. You have to balance keeping up your blog entries with producing your prose, editing said prose, advertizing said prose, and your obligations to the rest of the planet.

Me, I'm really great at the Writing and Editing parts of it all, and I like to think I'm pretty decent at the obligations to my friends and family that I often refer to as "My Real Life". It's the advertizing part of it that always gets my britches stuck in the spin dry cycle.

By advertizing, I mean things that ultimately will increase my readership, like maintaining my new Facebook fan page, booking and appearing at cons and writing seminars,(see "Rob's world tour" in the sidebar), coming up with witty blogs, tweets and status updates, identifying new projects to work on, and just generally standing up and trying to get the world to take notice of the speck screaming at it as it spins on.

Time was when these little details would be taken care of by a publisher or agent... Yeah, welcome to the new reality of being a writer in the 21st century. It's all on you, pally... get cracking. Ain't nobody gonna write those Facebook updates for you, and you've got to beat George Takei to the punch if you want to be relevant next week.

It's actually a lot of stress for a person to deal with, which is why I tend to slack on the blog. If any of my fellow writers have figured this balance thing out, I'd love to hear from you. If you're just starting out, though... Don't say I didn't warn you!