Wow, just wow. Right now it's Day 11 of the Challenge and I've written and published two books. This is no small feat considering the week from hell I've just had…
If you'd like to see any previous weeks' update, you can find them here.
So as they say, the minute you put lofty goals or ‘asks' out into the Universe, a couple of things start to happen. 1) You get really busy with more and more people wanting to chat with you about your work and working with you (which is super POSITIVE!) and, 2) You get presented with a number of challenges to test you… these I could have done without this week!
Let's start at the beginning…
Week 2—Challenge Update
Day 8 – Monday: After the first week, I was hoping to have started writing this next book ahead of schedule, but as it turned out, I never started outlining and writing this book until today.
The main reason—I had a number of launch tasks to complete for Book 1 and I also had a number of client commitments to deal with, which lead to bringing me back on schedule. But that's ok, I can deal with that, right?
So what happened today to make it challenging? I didn't start outlining or writing the book until 4pm, quite a number of hours later than my scheduled 7:30am timeslot!
The reason? I had a number of calls that got scheduled into my calendar from sohelpful.me (great service, try it!), because… silly Lise hadn't adjusted her calendar to accommodate for her writing days! Oops… Universe challenge received!
I try my best to be available every day to help people, but hadn't thought ahead to adjust my calendar to allow for the challenge. That's now been sorted.
So I finished Day 8 fairly late, first half of the book written by 9pm, after a 5am start. Tired much? Yep…
Day 9 – Tuesday: Today I was better prepared and was able to move around some of my calls and stick to my writing schedule start time of 7:30am. In amongst this ‘writing time', I fielded a phone call from a distraught girlfriend in need of a shoulder to cry on, a client needing help with OptimizePress as well as another call from another client with some further work… did I mention that this was a CHALLENGE?!
I knew that it was going to be a juggling act between my work and client work, but I don't think I was quite prepared for just how much of a juggling act it was going to be. Without boring you with the details, I got back on track to writing and finishing the first draft by 2pm.
I finished the book at just over 9,300 words and contacted the editor. Self-edit completed and manuscript sent to editor at 8pm.
Day 10 – Wednesday: Now that the book is with the editor, I've got a bit of breathing space. I decided to keep the same freebie opt-in for the entire series to cut down on having to create multiple landing pages and lists in Mailchimp. I'll likely change the freebie's after the challenge is finished, so they are more relevant for each book topic, but for now, the freebie works for the entire series.
Today I reached out to my cover designer, Steve and got him to sort the next cover. As always, he turned it around in record time and I received the cover within a few hours of ‘knocking' on his door.
I complained about the brown (chocolate as Steve calls it) colour, but he promised that all the covers in the next part of the range would be ‘pretty' colours 🙂 Thanks Steve!
[images style=”0″ image=”http%3A%2F%2Fhustleandgroove.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F01%2FOFS-2-ipad.png” width=”544″ link_url=”http%3A%2F%2Fhustleandgroove.com%2FOFSGuide2″ new_window=”Y” align=”center” top_margin=”0″ alt_text=”How%20to%20Set%20Freelancing%20Rates%20and%20Get%20Paid%20What%20You're%20Worth!” full_width=”Y”]
And just when I thought I was done for the day, my editor, Lisa, got the book back to me! And because I'm a sucker for punishment, I went through the edits later on that day, finishing up around 7pm, just in time to cook dinner!
Day 11 – Thursday: First job on the agenda today was to convert to .mobi and make sure that all the formatting looked good and bullet points were aligned properly, etc. I used the Kindle Previewer and my iPad to do this. Once I was happy, and after a few more client calls, I was able to upload the book to KDP and hit ‘publish'.
As I type this, I've just gotten an email notification from Amazon advising that the book is now live! I love how quickly that part of the process takes.
The other job for me today was to get in touch with my ‘book ambassadors.' These are people who want to get free access to every new book I publish and in exchange for that, they leave me an HONEST review on Amazon. So far, it's been working well and my lovely ambassadors have been leaving some great review's with some great feedback.
If you'd like to jump in on the action, go and sign up here.
And that's where I'm at today. Review requests sent, book published, now I've got a day or two up my sleeve… just in time for a long holiday weekend here in New Zealand!
Do you have a question about the challenge? Wanna know how I came up with my book ideas or what my process was pre-challenge? Leave you questions in the comments below!
[arrows style=”arrow-blue-3.png” align=”center”]
