Do You Have to Do Everything Yourself?

Canva

The other day I put on my list of things to do several writer admin tasks. I needed to catch up on scene cards, schedule a week of Instagram, set up a page on Notion for my scenes and other tasks related to the writing thing.  

You know why I had a list of admin stuff? Because I dislike doing so. I’d say “hate”, but my mother’s voice is in my head telling me it’s rude to use that word. Seriously. It’s on repeat.  

One of my writer friends mentioned she’d been told you can do everything almost for free if you work hard and long. My friend is very smart and very budget conscious. She heard free and was on board.  

I heard the information and immediately thought about hiring someone to do my social media. Right now I pay for software to help me be engaging and consistent in posting on Instagram. It’s the only social thing I do.

Darius Bashar

I pay fifteen dollars for Canva which I use to help size things and add text to pictures. And I use Plann as a scheduler for Instagram. I think I pay them ten bucks a month. So, a solid twenty-five bucks for five posts per week, fifty-two weeks of the year. Twenty-five times twelve is three hundred bucks. Let me repeat that, three hundred dollars in social media. I’m the labor, right? 

In a class taught by a wonderful, fun lady, she stressed you don’t have to do everything yourself. Maybe at the beginning you might not have as much budget freedom, but as you get better and your readers get hungrier for your stories, you can get rid of the bits you don’t or aren’t good at. This writer had help, and she cherished it.  

What’s the one thing you dislike the most? For me its has always been social media. But if I hired someone to do my stuff, I would learn and grow. That’s not a bad thing. Like a class in reverse. The teacher learning from the student. 

If I hired someone and saw it as a class, I'd want to know more about book marketing. The market moves lightning fast. Books come and go. Trends fizzle and die. New social media outlets are born. It’s a morass of ways to make mistakes that cost you thousands of dollars. 

Luis Villasmil

I need to keep a log of all my time in a more consistent way. Take seven days and see where my time actually goes. I know some things. Like four hours a week for two blogs. I take twenty minutes to put out five hundred words. And that’s my writing goal this quarter. Five hundred words a day. I still need to figure out how many minutes I take to do all my writer things and then personal things. I never have enough time. There is always something that doesn’t get done. How much time am I wasting? 

My father owned businesses. He preached to me I should make sure I have the money and the time to make a go of things. Invest in yourself and you’ll gain without trying. This year I’m keeping track of expenses. I want to see what I’m spending my time and money on in a twelve-month period. I think the answer is going to shock me. 

It might even mean I get rid of a few things and push go on getting some help. It doesn’t mean I’m lazy. It means I value myself enough to make good business sense. I’m good at writing. That doesn’t always translate to social things.  

Would you be open to letting someone else handling some admin stuff for you? Why or why not?